


M Gene

by icestorm1196



Category: Sherlock (TV), X-Men
Genre: Bad Parenting, Bad Science, Bullying, Homophobic Language, I will post at the beginning of each chapter which tags apply, M/M, Neglect, Not all tags applicable for all chapters, Winglock, some internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2018-03-23 00:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 83,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icestorm1196/pseuds/icestorm1196
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fusion with X-Men universe. Characters from Marvel will be mentioned, but never met.</p>
<p>Sherlock was born different.  Too excitable, too curious, too smart for his own good.  But when he is ten, things go from bad to worse when he starts to grow wings.<br/>Mutants are not really welcome in the Holmes family, and he is forced to hide what he is, especially when he is sent away to school.<br/>The story follows Sherlock as he grows up, suffers through secondary school and university, delves into his life as a young adult and finally consulting detective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Child

**Author's Note:**

> This story basically will follow Sherlock from childhood to adulthood. It's about acceptance, of others and of yourself.   
> This story already exists in a full form on fanfiction.net, under the same title.   
> However, this version is vastly longer and goes a lot deeper into the past than the old story does.
> 
> This chapter will involve some bullying, and Sherlock's parents...not being very good. Obviously, this ignores Season 3's look at his parents.

Chapter 1  
The Child

Sherlock Holmes had always been a little bit strange. He was a fussy baby, but he didn’t seem inclined to do much of anything other than cry if he didn’t get his way. He didn’t seem interested in learning to walk, or speak.   
“Mycroft was speaking before he was two years old,” Viola Holmes whispered to Siger. “And Sherlock won’t even stand up.” 

Three doctors later, and all they knew was that there was nothing obviously wrong with their child. He’d talk and walk when he was good and ready, said their family physician. “Don’t worry about Mr Holmes,” he said. “There is nothing physically wrong with him. Just give him time.” 

Mycroft was interested in just how his baby brother worked. He was seven, he was interested in how everything worked. He had already learned how to take apart and reassemble the family television. The picture worked better now too. He read to Sherlock all the time, tried to coerce him into speaking or walking. Sherlock seemed perfectly content to let things carry on as they were.

That is, until one day, at the age of four, when, in an experimental mood, Mycroft started reading the book about pirates in the wrong order, and Sherlock began to throw a tantrum. He threw the brand new book at Mycroft’s head. Mycroft shouted, and Viola ran into the room, furious. Sherlock launched himself to his feet when Mycroft started pointing fingers. “He’s readin’ it wrong!” he yelled, furiously. “He’s readin’ all the words outta order an’ he’s makin’ things up!” He stomped his foot. “He promised to read the book, an’ he’s messin’ it up a _porpoise!_ ” 

Both Mycroft and Viola stared at the irate four-year-old in shock. Until that day, neither of them had heard Sherlock utter a single word. They’d never once even seen him stand up without several minutes of bribing, cajoling, and threatening. Now he stood, of his own accord, little fists clenched and shaking, tousled black hair almost vibrating. 

“I wanted to see if you were paying attention,” said Mycroft, a bit weakly. “You don’t say much. I wanted to know if you understood what….if you understood.”

“People who talk when there’s nothin’ to say are idiots,” was the slightly pompous reply.

Mycroft snorted, only to quickly stifle his laughter when his mother shot him a dirty look. 

“Don’t say the word ‘idiot,” said Viola to her youngest. “It’s not a nice word for a little boy to say.”

“Mycroft says it,” argued Sherlock. Viola wanted to rub her temples. Of course, as soon as he started talking, he’d be argumentative. Though she had to admit, even Mycroft hadn’t had such a command on language when he’d first begun.

“Mycroft is eleven,” she replied. “And he shouldn’t be saying it either,” she added, glaring at her eldest. Mycroft had the grace to look abashed. “Well. Your father will be pleased, at any rate,” sniffed Viola Holmes. “He thinks you are simple, you know.”

Sherlock stared down at his feet. He wasn’t an idiot. He really wasn’t. But Siger Holmes demanded perfection. And Sherlock knew he could never measure up to Mycroft. He’d known he could talk for a long time. He just wanted to be better at it before he started. He wanted to make sure he could do it perfectly, so that his parents would have no cause to reprimand him for it. Granted, they didn’t like the fact he wouldn’t talk, but they couldn’t do much about it. And honestly, he’d learned early that if he was stubborn about walking, he could usually get a treat of some kind if he waited for as long as possible before actually getting up. Mycroft, when he found out about it, would roll his eyes and bemoan the fact that Sherlock had been a manipulative little shit even when he’d been a toddler. 

Sherlock just called it ‘getting what you want.’ 

***  
Sherlock was an odd child, but he was quite normal in a lot of ways. He loved playing outdoors, pretending he was a pirate, or doing ‘esper’ments.’ Mycroft had a chemistry book lying around, and when Sherlock found it, he’d been immediately entranced. He didn’t understand much of the book, but he made Mycroft explain experimenting to him, and the idea refused to leave him alone. He experimented on everything.

How many worms can you find after a rainstorm as opposed to before one. Or during one.  
How easy is it to pull up different kinds of grass? What kind tastes better? What kind to turtles like to eat?  
How long before someone notices the grass in the guest bed? How long before it goes yellow?  
How long does it take for apples to start rotting? Do things live in it? What sorts of things? How long can such things stay alive?  
What can you find in the fireplace after things have been burned? What colors of ash are there? Does paper look different than wood when burned?

Most of his experiments ended with him dirty. They also ended with him tracking dirt or soot or water (how many types of water plants can be found in the back pond? What sorts of bugs?) all through the house. 

Siger hated the experiments. He called them trivial, useless, messy. “Mycroft didn’t do this nonsense!” he said, furiously, after finding muddy footprints on the rug in his study, and worms in his expensive alcohol. Sherlock had wanted to see what different liquids did to worms, because he’d heard about what salt did to slugs, and he knew that water just made them fat and bloated, but it made sense that other drinks would do other things. 

Sherlock listened as his father stormed up the stairs. Sherlock hadn’t been able to get the worms back out of the alcohol jars, and he hadn’t been sure he wanted to. The smell had made him a bit dizzy the first time he’d opened them. He listened to Siger rant downstairs, knew that his father was angry about the worms. He hadn’t _known_. He really hadn’t. And Mummy had said he could experiment on the worms. She made a point to watch out for him, make sure he wasn’t killing things that had a proper brain, but worms and ants, she didn’t really care if he killed. Or drowned. Eventually, it would have to stop, but for now, she figured it was fairly normal.  
But tonight, for the first time, Sherlock felt a cold fear in the pit of his stomach. Father was angry, and it was because of his experimenting. Father angry was never a good thing.

He never hit Sherlock, but he’d thrown things once or twice, and the shouting was worse than if he’d actually thrown a punch, Sherlock thought. He’d been hit before. The children at the park liked to hit him. They didn’t seem to like him either. But it wasn’t like the things he mentioned were _secrets_. It was obvious. Jenni-Louise’s mother arrived at the park alone, but was always shortly approached by a young woman who had no child of her own, and Sherlock had _seen_ the other lady kiss Jenni-Louise’s mum. She’d giggled, and pushed the other woman away, gently. She’d glanced around, but no one aside from Sherlock had seen, but after that, it was easy to see that they acted like Carlton Ruth’s parents. It was obvious.

He had been surprised, then, when Jenni-Louise’s mother came to the park one day looking very stressed, with a handsome sort of man that looked like Jenni-Louise, and who kept his arm around her mother the whole time. He’d asked Jenni-Louise’s mother where her friend was, with the pretty hair, and after that, he didn’t see Jenni-Louise or her mother at the park anymore. Sarah Waller though, the best friend of Jenni-Louise, had pushed him off of the monkey bars the next day, and stormed off. 

Another time, he’d asked Jacob Waller, Sarah’s older brother, why he’d painted his nails. The nails were clean when he’d asked, but the scent of Acetone was strong, and there was a slight discoloration on the bottom of the nail beds, like what happened when Mummy took off _her_ nail polish. Jacob, had been furiously embarrassed, and he’d shouted at Sherlock before pushing him down. Jacob’s friends had laughed, then, when Sherlock had tried to get up, Jacob pushed him down again. “You’re a liar,” Jacob had seethed, his friends still laughing. “You’re just a stupid little liar and you make things up.”

Sherlock had been angry. “I am not!” he’d yelled back. He was five years younger than Jacob, but the older boy didn’t scare him. “I don’t make _anythin’_ up!” That wasn’t entirely true, but he knew he was right about the nail polish. Later, Mycroft told him that ten-year old boys don’t like to have it suggested they do ‘girly’ things like wear nail polish, especially in front of their friends. “He’d only just taken it off!” protested Sherlock. “It was _obv’ous._ ”  
“Obvious,” Mycroft had corrected, but Sherlock had only pouted.

Mycroft was concerned for his little brother. Sherlock was only five, but he was always getting into trouble down at the park. He’d wander down by himself when Father was annoyed at Sherlock’s latest experiment. You could see the park from their front yard, but Sherlock was coming home increasingly often with rumpled clothes and bruised hands.   
Next year, Mycroft would be going away to school, and Sherlock would be alone here. There’d be no one to look after him, and make sure Father didn’t catch Sherlock with the dirty clothes. He’d tried talking to his brother, but Sherlock just insisted that his friends were only playing, and it was fine.

Mycroft stole down to the park one afternoon himself, telling himself that it wasn’t spying, what he was going to do, just...checking up. Making sure Sherlock was okay. And enjoying a nice Spring day in the park. 

Sherlock was in the middle of a group of children, all two or three years older. He would lunge at one, and they’d dart away. Sherlock was red-faced and panting. It looked like he’d been ‘it’ for a while. Mycroft watched for a few more minutes, and finally Sherlock caught someone. The girl was short, and she hadn’t gotten away fast enough. Sherlock stood, breathing hard as she ran away again. She easily tagged one of the other children--he’d let her catch him, Mycroft could tell, he’d basically stood still, and he darted after Sherlock again, tagging him easily. And it started again. Well. At least they were playing with him, even if it didn’t seem like they were playing fair. He decided not to leave yet though. Just in case.

Sherlock stopped, gasping again. “Aww. Baby’s too tired,” jeered one of the older boys.   
“I told you he’d crap out,” said another.  
“Why’d we let him play anyway?”  
“Baby Holmes!”

Sherlock stamped his foot. “I am _not_ a baby!” he’d yelled back. It wasn’t effective. He was breathless and exhausted. 

“You sound like a baby!”

“I’m not! You just keep taggin’ me!”

“Only babies winge!” one of them shouted. “You gonna cry Holmes?”

Sherlock crossed his arms, and glared. Some of the older children had gravitated closer together, whispering.   
“Alright,” said one of them, “New game.” Mycroft decided he needed to get to know who the other children were. They were all a few years younger than he was, and he hadn’t bothered getting to know them. He had a bad feeling about this though, and he knew that he’d have to start learning names if he wanted to help his baby brother. 

“Holmes, since you were it, you get to remain ‘it’. But this game, you don’t hafta run. You count to a hundred, an’ we’ll hide. You just hafta find us.” He pulled out a handkercheif. “An’ just to be sure you don’t cheat, we’ll tie this around your eyes.”

Sherlock wouldn’t cheat, thought Mycroft, but he didn’t protest as the fabric was tied around his head, though he did wince and let out a soft cry of pain. “Baby,” teased the older boy. He’d tied it too tight on purpose. Mycroft narrowed his eyes. “Now count.” 

Sherlock sighed and started counting. The other children all started to run, but two of the older boys crept forward until they were right next to Sherlock. He faltered in his count, but it was too late. The others were both twice his age, and Sherlock was small and skinny for his age. They picked him up, ignoring his screams and his struggles, and tossed him, unceremoniously, in the duckpond before running off to join the others, laughing as Sherlock came up sputtering, yanking at the handkerchief. Mycroft was already hurrying down to his brother. He was not a thin boy, and his legs chafed together as he hurried out from his hiding place and toward the duck pond. 

It wasn’t deep, at least, but Sherlock was still struggling with the handkerchief, and he kept slipping. Mycroft was in the water and pulling his brother to relative safety before he even knew what he was doing, removing the handkerchief from Sherlock’s eyes, babbling reassurances. 

“It’s f-fine,” gasped out Sherlock. “Th-they were j-just play-playin.’”

Mycroft was about to object to that, but Sherlock looked miserable already. His hair was plastered to his face, and he had a cut on his knee from a rock in the pond, and there was grass stuck to his legs from where Mycroft had pulled him out. “Okay,” he said. “That’s enough playing for now though, don’t you think?” 

All through that last summer, Mycroft watched. Things only got worse. Sometimes he’d get the story out of Sherlock: he’d asked when so-and-so’s dog had died, casually mentioned that a parent was no longer living at home, commented that someone’s father had struck them, that they’d gotten into their mothers pills. Little things, ‘obvious’ things, Sherlock said. He didn’t understand why his comments would get him yelled at, or hit, or shoved, or called cruel names. 

The pranks on Sherlock continued too. The children knew how to get to him. He was told that there was an interesting bird’s nest in a tree, they’d help him up to see, and once he was in the branches, boosted up by a few twelve-year olds, he was abandoned, their laughter ringing in his ears as he clutched to the branches of the tree in fright until Mycroft found him hours later. Father had locked him in his room for two days for that one, which hadn’t seemed fair, but Father said if Sherlock couldn’t get home for dinner, he clearly didn’t want to eat, and therefore, they’d give him what he wanted.

Someone would invite him to come see their new boat, how well it floated on the duck pond, and when he got there, offer him the chance to put it in the water and start it moving. It had been a beautiful little boat, and he’d been terribly excited, and he’d carefully placed it in the water, only to suddenly feel a sharp shove from behind him and both he and the boat went down. The boat had cracked, and he’d mourned it, but the boy to whom it belonged yelled at him for breaking it, and threw the broken toy at his head, giving him a split lip and a bruised eye. Mycroft had spoken to the boy about that, and two days later, Mycroft gave Sherlock a similar little boat, though this one was green, not red, and the boy that had owned the red boat didn’t take part in any more tricks against Sherlock, just stood to the side, sulking a bit.

But Mycroft couldn’t correct every infraction. Sherlock would come home with an itchy rash because someone had suggested he catalogue some interesting plants, but neglected to mention there was anything poisonous. Or he’d be scratched up, because the football they’d been playing with was kicked into the brambles and ‘Holmes, we’ll let you play if you get the ball.’ 

The only good bit of that summer for Sherlock, as far as Mycroft could tell, was that Father was away more and more, and there was no one to frighten or hurt Sherlock at home. 

Mycroft tried to get Sherlock to spend more time inside, teaching him about computers and VCR’s and cameras and televisions. He showed Sherlock how to take them apart, how to put them together even better than they’d been before, how to make something entirely new out of spare parts. But Sherlock wasn’t interested in machines, not like Mycroft was. He loved being outside, loved the open air. After that first incident, when he’d been stuck in the tree, he’d taught himself how to climb trees, so he wouldn’t get stuck like that again.   
He loved being up high, and soon, he was climbing everything he could. Mycroft chased him down from the roof on more than one occasion. 

But soon enough, Mycroft left. He was thirteen, and it was time, Mr and Mrs Holmes had decided, that he go to the prestigious boarding school in Switzerland that Mr Holmes had gone to as a boy. 

Sherlock had written to him weekly at first. Mycroft didn’t reply to every letter. Sherlock’s clumsy, childish writing was difficult to read, and mostly it just hurt, to read about the things in Sherlock’s life that Mycroft couldn’t help with. 

One day though, he actually had something intriguing to write back to his little brother.

_Dear brother,  
I know you are always asking about interesting things that happen on campus. Well, until recently, nothing has happened that you would consider interesting. You are not keen on reading about my classes, and that is understandable. However, I noticed that you have a growing interest in the inexplicable and the strange. You might not have heard of the ‘mutant’ phenomenon. You know about mutation, obviously, we discussed albinism and melanism in plants and animals. Anyway, when people speak of the mutant ‘problem’ it isn’t mutations like that of which they are speaking. Those are common, and we see them in the animal kingdom every day. _

_I realize that I am taking a while to get to the point. You are probably bored already, but I hope you are still paying attention. I won’t bore you with the history, but suffice to say that humans are developing mutations far beyond what is normally seen in the natural world. There is a boy here that can look at something and make it catch fire. He can’t extinguish it, which is unfortunate, but still interesting. I caught him at it the other day, just looking at the hearth and suddenly, there was a roaring fire! And I obviously looked for an obvious trick, but when I looked closely later, after he was gone, I noted that there was nowhere near enough ash in the fireplace for the sort of fire that had been created. There had only been the one piece of wood, and yet his fire burned bright and hot and it lasted for much longer than it should have. And yes, I admit your ash experiment did come in useful here--I was able to determine that the wood used was simply normal firewood--English Oak. It wasn’t one of those long burning bricks, and there was no accelerant at all--no kindling either. Isn’t that interesting? I’m sending along a copy of an article written by a Professor Xavier, currently residing in America, though he’s a British citizen by birth. It’s about mutation, and a few of his theories. I’ve also enclosed a summary of the article, because though I know you are intelligent, I think the science is going to be a bit beyond you._

_On a different note, Mother said you were sent home three times this month for fighting. I note that you made no mention of it in your letters. Do try to behave._

_\--Mycroft_

 

***

Sherlock really did enjoy letters from his brother. Mycroft was only thirteen, but he spoke and wrote better than most adults did, and definitely better than any child Sherlock had to spend time with on a daily basis. Sherlock was only six, but he understood almost everything Mycroft wrote to him (and when he didn’t understand something, he pulled out the huge dictionary that Mycroft had given him before he left and looked it up).

The article Mycroft sent went largely not understood, though he tried to read it several times. Even when he looked up the words, it still made no sense. The concepts were simply too complicated. Mycroft’s summary was a bit better. People are made up of DNA (this in and of itself was confusing). DNA is made of of chromosomes. Half are from Mummy, and half are from Father. DNA is what decides everything about a person. But sometimes, something very strange happens in the DNA, and instead of just saying that a person has green eyes, it also says that they can shoot lasers from said eyes. Sherlock seriously doubted that, really, but if it was, that wasn’t Mycroft’s fault for summarizing. But his brother was right, it was an interesting thought. People with strange abilities beyond the normal.

He wondered if he might be a mutant, with his talent for seeing the obvious, though everyone else thought it a secret. But the article suggested that mutations usually manifest themselves in puberty, so he decided that he wasn’t one. He wasn’t entirely certain what ‘puberty’ was, but he knew it happened when you were a teenager, and he wasn’t one yet. 

Somewhere, his wires got a bit crossed, and he spent the next two years assuming that everyone turned into a mutant when they hit puberty and just kept quiet about it. Mycroft had sighed at that, and given him two more summarized articles by people that studied mutations, and also sat him down and explained, in a pained voice, just what puberty was.

And just because his face got spotty and he grew weird hair, and his voice kept changing pitches, it didn’t make him a mutant. Sherlock’s knack for observation wasn’t a mutation either, he said. Well, not the sort that people meant when they called someone a ‘Mutant.’ “Those are people that can move things with their minds or have tails, or can crawl on walls,” explained Mycroft to his seven (nearly eight) year old brother one night. 

Sherlock was too old to be sneaking into Mycroft’s room in the middle of the night, snuggling against his ample stomach due to ‘bad dreams.’ But Mycroft didn’t stop him either. When Sherlock wasn’t asking questions that Mycroft felt embarrassed answering, Mycroft talked about school, about how he was the cleverest in the school with machines, and how he could get the other boys to pay him to fix their radios and the hall phone and the few desktop computers that had managed to find their way to the dorms. Sherlock would fall asleep listening to Mycroft talk about machines, how they worked, how easy it was to make them do what he wanted, even if other boys had a lot of trouble with them. If Mycroft didn’t know that mutations were flashy, he’d worry that he might have one. His ability with technology sometimes seemed to be a bit excessive for someone that never read that much about it. His affinity had just...always been there, and a few years ago, had grown exponentially. But it couldn’t be a mutation, he assured himself. He wasn’t controlling the machines with his mind or anything. He was just good with them. Natural ability, like Sherlock with his violin. It was starting to become unnerving, how often he had to reassure himself of that. He couldn’t wait to stop being a teenager. This sort of thing would stop when he became an adult.

***  
Sherlock hated school.  
He always had. He didn’t fit in here. He tried to make friends, but no one wanted to talk to him for very long. He tried not to discuss his observations, but sometimes, he just got so excited about them. And then, of course, he’d gotten caught with a dead bird, examining the corpse. He’d found a knife and cut into it--though the thing was so bloated it would have split soon anyway---and everyone thought he’d killed it. So they stayed away. They called him ‘freak’ and ‘psychopath’ and said he’d be a serial killer when he grew up. Mycroft always said that the other children were idiots, and that it didn’t matter what idiots thought. They were simply jealous. Sometimes though, Sherlock wouldn’t have minded just one friend.

He told himself he wouldn’t mind so much if school were interesting. But it was just….boring. They either learned things he already knew or that he didn’t care about. Some of his grades were excellent, others….definitely could use work. Only fear of his father kept him from actively skipping class. Father wasn’t home much anymore, and when he was, he smelled funny. 

It took Sherlock a while to work it out, but after an experiment with Mummy’s perfumes and make-up, he figured it out. He knew he probably shouldn’t bring it up, so he didn’t, not yet. He needed to figure out how to broach the topic, how to ask. Because….what if he was wrong? He needed more evidence. He didn’t want Mummy to hate him like the children at school did when he talked about things like that.

He kept a watchful eye on his father, but tried not to interfere too much. He didn’t like talking to Father. The man was all too aware that Sherlock wasn’t Mycroft, and that he was a disappointment. Father was always yelling at him, even when he hadn’t done anything.  
Mummy stopped telling him when Sherlock brought teacher’s notes home from school.

She was worried though, about how anti-social Sherlock was becoming. He’d always been an interactive child--going to the park, playing with the other children. It had gotten rough sometimes she knew, but that was to be expected. Children were children, after all. But now...now he never talked about the other kids at school, he barely talked about his classes. He talked about a book he’d read about pirates, which seemed to be his new obsession, but the only time he seemed to spend with the children his age was in fights.

Such a lonely boy….Sherlock might be odd, but she couldn’t stand to see him so alone.   
For his ninth birthday, his father was away on business, and she brought home a lovely Irish Setter puppy from the shelter. Sherlock was delighted. He immediately christened the pup ‘Redbeard,’ and the two became inseparable. Sherlock seemed to blossom with his new friend. He talked with Redbeard about everything, he brought the dog everywhere. It adored him. He taught the dog to respond to commands like ‘Ahoy!’ (Bark--or ‘ahoy matey’ which meant ‘Shake’ if Sherlock held out a hand), ‘Avast!’ (Stop and wait for further commands) and ‘Walk the Plank!’ (play dead).

They went on expeditions for buried treasure (she bought them costume jewelry for just this purpose--and so Sherlock wouldn’t steal hers), they ‘raided and pillaged’ (by sneaking copious amounts of biscuits out of the larder). Sherlock learned how to play ‘A Pirate’s Life for Me’ on the violin, and, much to her dismay, learned all the words of the song, which he sang at the top of his lungs (with accompaniment by Redbeard). The dog slept in the boy’s bed, it waited for him to return from school, didn’t leave his side when he was at the house. 

Sherlock, it seemed was finally starting to act like a normal boy. Mrs Holmes breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about him after all.

But the year he turned ten, the feathers started to grow.


	2. The Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's mutation comes to fruition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's parents continue to be generally horrible.  
> Also a bit of body horror.

The feathers started growing the summer after he turned ten. Sherlock and Redbeard had come thundering into the house muddy from the waist down, leaves wedged in their hair (and fur, respectively). Mrs Holmes sighed at the sight of her youngest. Mycroft wasn’t this much trouble. She reached into his hair and pulled out a soft black feather. He yelped in surprise. “Hey!”

“It was really stuck in there,” she replied. “You weren’t messing with the crows again. Sherlock we have talked to you about that more than once.” 

“I wasn’t,” he muttered. He’d learned his lesson about the crows. The last time, he’d ended up with a gash in his thumb that still ached sometimes. 

“Well, go clean up,” sighed his mother. “Your father will be here for dinner, and you know how he feels about mess.” Sherlock blanched. “None of that,” scoffed Mrs Holmes. “Just hurry up. Anita will wash Redbeard, and you’ll both be presentable.”

After his bath, he stood in front of the mirror, towel wrapped loosely around bony hips. He angled a small hand mirror to see the back of his head. Little feathers, peeking out of his hair, just at the nape of his neck. No. _No_. He wouldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t be a….no. He wouldn’t _allow_ this. It was a fluke, nothing more. He grabbed at the little feathers, yanking them out along with patches of hair. If he tore them out, they’d be gone. They couldn’t come back. He stared at the little pile helplessly for a long moment, then flushed it down the toilet. He angled the mirror again, looking at the back of his head for nearly ten minutes before determining that no, there were no more feathers. Good. That….it was a relief. He’d known it wouldn’t last. He wasn’t a mutant. It was just some weird fluke.

Still, he was quiet and withdrawn at dinner, which worried his brother and seemed to please his father. He picked at his food, not really feeling up to eating at the moment. 

The problem didn’t go away. Every morning, or every other morning, he’d find new feathers when he woke up, mostly growing just out of the nape of his neck. Sometimes, he’d find them at night, but they kept showing up. He couldn’t call it a fluke anymore. 

He curled against Redbeard and cried. It wasn’t _fair._ He was already a freak, why did he have to be a mutant too? Even if it was just a few feathers, he wasn’t stupid. It was only going to get worse. He’d done enough reading to know that mutations generally started in puberty. He hadn’t started that yet. The dog panted against his slim chest, his warm breath against Sherlock’s back was steady. It was comforting, even though he clutched at Redbeard like he was drowning, the dog didn’t move. He nosed against Sherlock’s neck and whined, trying to lick him, and he didn’t run away. 

Once he’d cried himself out, he vowed not to cry about it again. He couldn’t help it, what he was. He understood enough of the articles he’d read about mutation to know that it was in his DNA. That it was in his _molecules_ and there was nothing he could do about it. It didn’t make him feel much better really. Because it also meant that there wasn’t much he could do to change it, not unless he could change his most basic structures.

Sherlock, at the age of ten, was in a unique situation. He was young enough to still believe in the impossible, and intelligent enough to start putting together a plan for making the impossible….merely improbable. 

So, every morning, he would shower, and pick free all of the feathers that he could find. He’d destroy them in different ways--flushing them, burning them, burying them, scattering them to the winds. And after breakfast, he’d take Redbeard to the town library. The dog remained chained up in the shade outside and Sherlock spent whole mornings and afternoons sequestered in the records room, trawling through microfiche files, trying to find anything he could about Charles Xavier, the man who’d written the first article about mutation he’d ever read. He learned more about the man’s life than anticipated, but nothing all that interesting. He finally found his work, which was more interesting, even if he understood little of it. He took copious notes though, and borrowed books (both simple and complex) about biology as a whole, about DNA and evolution and genes.

His end goal was to isolate whatever caused the mutation in the first place. If he could find it, then he could figure out if the effects could be reversed. So far, as far as he could tell anyway, no one could find what made mutants what they were. Not even Charles Xavier. 

Mycroft had gotten him a microscope for Christmas. It wouldn’t be enough. He could examine the feathers, see how they differed from birds. He could examine his skin cells, and see how they were different than Mycrofts (mostly, they both looked like skin cells to him). But to actually see the DNA would not be so simple as just taking a blood sample and looking at it under his max 300 microscope. The local secondary school had an electron microscope. He’d have to see about using it.

Meanwhile, he learned all he could about mutations. Most people, as it turned out, had a mutation or two. Blue eyes, being left handed, having red hair or freckles….all mutations. But not the sort that might get people excluded or discriminated against (anymore). 

He talked through his plans with Redbeard, discussing increasingly complicated genetic concepts as if the dog could understand, even where Sherlock still didn’t fully get it a lot of the time. 

Mycroft worried about his brother, that he was withdrawing even more than usual, obsessing over things that he didn’t need to obsess over. Sherlock didn’t confide in Mycroft anymore, which saddened the older boy. He couldn’t admit that though, or ask Sherlock what was wrong. His queries seemed to end in a quip about his weight more often than not. Sherlock was afraid about something, but Mycroft couldn’t put his finger on what. He didn’t like that, but there was no time to figure it out before he returned to school for his last semester. He could have left early, gone to university, graduated early from there as well with whatever degrees he wanted. But Mycroft had learned the benefits of fitting in when necessary. And he had a knack for figuring out other people’s secrets. Almost everyone at the school, student and faculty alike, owed him a favor or two. He was keen to milk it for as long as possible. He resolved to keep a better eye on Sherlock though. Call more often. Write whenever Sherlock wrote him. 

But Sherlock only very rarely wrote to Mycroft anymore. Sometimes he’d send a quick message asking to find more articles by Xavier, or to find similar stories that he couldn’t find. Mycroft always accommodated him. He was starting to get a very nasty idea what his brother was researching. And if Sherlock happened to be a mutant….things would get very ugly for him very fast. 

***  
“I’m telling you Violet, they’re damn freaks. Monsters. They should be locked up.”

“Siger. That’s an incredibly out of touch idea. They’re still people.”

“Are they? Where’s the proof? That thing that was arrested the other night? She threw a man straight through a wall. Brick and mortar and all, just tossed him like he was nothing and the wall was paper. That’s not human, Violet.”

“That was one case. And she was barely a child! She didn’t know what was happening either.”

“So she said. But the freak was a thief, did you forget that? She was stealing!”

Sherlock listened to the conversation from the top of the stairs. Redbeard lay beside him, tail thumping occasionally. It was almost the winter holiday, and mutants had been in the news. It had started when Mycroft sent the whole family a letter. Father had read it aloud, but the content had started off a series of debates and arguments that had lasted days.

….. _That classmate I mentioned to you a few years ago, Sherlock? Remember, the one I thought might be a mutant that could start fires with his mind? Well, he’s been jailed. There were a series of strange and inexplicable blazes here over the past few weeks, and apparently, someone turned this fellow in. He swears it wasn’t him, but unless there is another firestarter on campus, I think it must be._

_Anyway, since then, three more of my classmates have been asked to leave the school for being mutants. One boy could hold his breath for an undetermined length of time, another had skin that was impenetrable to all sorts of attacks--be it fists or knives or rocks….and the third simply climbed well. He was like a squirrel, or a cat._

_I can think of several ways any one of those mutations could be used in a bad way, and apparently, so could the school. All of them were younger than I, and I really only had an inkling about the climber...but now everyone is aware. Everyone is suspicious. The atmosphere has become considerably tenser, and I can see there is little more I can gain from such a place, so, I will be graduating come December, instead of in May, as originally planned._

_I will see you all for the holidays,  
Mycroft _

Since then, Siger had made his thoughts on mutants well known. He hated them. They were unnatural. They were not human, though he wasn’t clear if they were more than or less than human, though asking had earned him a clout round the ear and a threat toward Redbeard.

Sherlock made sure to be extra careful about the feathers after that. He didn’t know how he could hide them for much longer. There seemed to be more of them every day; in his hair, on his neck, even on the backs of his shoulders. He was taking two showers daily now, just to pluck them all out. His back was constantly red and irritated. He started wearing darker shirts, because he kept bleeding on them. 

Things were worse when Mycroft came home. His parents mostly ignored him and let him just do whatever he wanted, so long as he went to school and didn’t get into fights. He did try to be good most of the time now. He was eleven, after all, and he’d more or less accepted that people weren’t going to like him, so why even try? He just didn’t start fights anymore. So his parents let him be. Siger didn’t like him much, and Violet figured he’d be fine so long as he had his dog. But Mycroft….Mycroft _cared_. It was infuriating. He never butted out of Sherlock’s business. And he kept asking him about mutations and his thoughts on it, and if he’d made any headway with Professor Xavier’s articles. Sherlock couldn’t shake him. He could already tell that this was going to be the start of something that would last a long time. He dreaded it.

***

It was just a few weeks after his eleventh birthday when the chest pains started. Just twinges mostly, but sometimes it actually felt like someone had struck him. Father told him that it was just growing pains, that he was going to get taller, and to stop being such an infant. So Sherlock stopped mentioning them, but god, they hurt sometimes. Mycroft got him some sort of muscle relaxant thing that helped a bit, but not for long. He tried potassium pills, but that didn’t help either. As the weeks wore on, the pains didn’t lessen, but they seemed to spread, creeping around to his sides, his back. Soon, his entire torso, neck to hips, ached almost all the time. He didn’t understand why. It didn’t look any different, he wasn’t taller….he just _hurt_. 

Sometimes it helped to just lie next to the fire with Redbeard on his other side, or with a hot water bottle (or three) as well as the dog. Even that wasn’t a constant fix, and it didn’t help that he had to go to school for six hours daily. He could barely walk by the time he arrived home some days. He stopped going to the library. He hadn’t forgotten his research, but most of the time, he was just too uncomfortable to spend the day there, hunched over tables or microfiche machines.

He still took Redbeard out, but he mostly stayed in the yard now. He still played pirates sometimes, but he was the wounded Captain now, having been shot or tortured by the Queen’s Army. The dog seemed to sense his master’s pain, and stayed close, except if a really interesting scent caught his nose. Or a some small rodent scurried away and dared him to give chase. He always came back quickly though, licking Sherlock’s face until the boy smiled.

****  
Mycroft really only came home for Christmas anymore. He was at university, and computers and laptops were far more common than they’d ever been. He had access to a great wealth of technology in London that he hadn’t had before. As it turned out, Mycroft was even better with machine’s than he’d originally thought. Hacking became somewhat of a specialty of his. He figured out how to control certain CCTV camera’s with a simple desktop computer, so long as the computer was enabled with a camera itself, he could even see what the CCTV camera saw. It didn’t take long for him to figure out how to make them move remotely. And it wasn’t just CCTV. He could access another computer easily without moving from his room. He could take files and move them around, he could delete things or add them, or enable web-cams and spy. He could do it from far away too. From his dormitory at Oxford, he could find the Holmes family computer and see what was on it. He didn’t really need to come home. He already knew most of what was going on, and what he couldn’t figure out, Mummy would tell him in her letters.

Sherlock pretended he didn’t miss his older brother. He sent Sherlock the articles he asked for, and more. He directed him toward other writings too, so he could better understand genetics itself--and step by step explanations about how to test DNA and find it’s markers, and to compare it to other DNA. It wasn’t an explicit agreement to help Sherlock figure out where mutations came from, but it was implicit--and that was enough for Sherlock.

***  
The year Sherlock turned thirteen, the year before he was slated to go to the boarding school Mycroft had excelled in, the back pains started in earnest. The constant throbbing had more or less gone away--at least, he didn’t notice it anymore. The back pain though, was growing worse. There were more and more feathers every day, too many to get rid of. And the pain in his spin and shoulder blades ached straight down to the bone. Redbeard became more and more of a comfort at first. 

But when it came, the change was sudden. The pain had been growing steadily worse all day. Sherlock was in his room, pacing, trying to ignore it and work up the strength to go outside and let Redbeard play in the snow. But then, he shouted, and fell to his hands and knees, panting. He was _screaming_ , his back felt like it was splitting open. He tugged off his shirt, the back of it was covered in bloody streaks, there were _holes_ in it too which didn’t make sense. Another wave of pain sent him all the way to the floor, shaking, not even noticing that he was screaming again. The door crashed open, but he was too blinded by the pain to notice. He sobbed, fingers clenching in the carpet, his entire body trembling like a leaf in a windstorm. 

The pain lasted a long time, and when he heard something _crack_ he passed out entirely.

Sherlock didn’t know how long had passed when he woke up. He was still on the floor, but the blood around him was dark and tacky. Wet still, but drying fast. He stood on trembling legs, and almost immediately fell over again. His balance was really quite off. Odd. He steadied himself, then weaved his way to the mirror. He turned to look and almost passed out again. Crumpled on his back, dark and bloodied, were two small wings. Wings! He couldn’t breath. The feathers were bad enough, how could he hide this? He reached back and touched one experimentally. He screamed again. Damn it was tender. The wings definitely had nerves then, and they felt….exposed. His back was streaked red and brown with blood where the wings had forced their way out of his skin. 

They must have been what caused the pain though, these past few days. Wings, growing under his skin, against his bone and muscle….rearranging things to just _exist_. He needed to get them off, he thought. Off before Father saw. He reached back to grab hold of the wing again. This proved to be a terrible idea, and for several long minutes, he actually whited out from the pain.

When he came to, he noticed the door for the first time. Someone had seen him already. Why hadn’t they helped? He sank to the floor, hugging himself slightly, trembling now from both chill and shock.

Mummy found him like that, hours later. “Oh my god,” she whispered. 

“Mummy,” he’d croaked out. His dignity was already in shreds. 

“What are we going to tell you father?” she asked, faintly. With those words, Sherlock felt himself crumble a little bit inside. There would be no words of comfort from his mother.

Later that night, he huddled in his room with Redbeard. The dog had been concerned about the blood, had sniffed at the wings, huffed warm, wet air on them, but Sherlock had shuddered and the dog had come around to his front, subjecting himself to a tentative hug.

The next few days were torture. The wings hurt to touch, but Mummy insisted on cleaning them anyway. She couldn’t stand looking at all that blood. She used bleach on the carpet in Sherlock’s room, then called a cleaning service and told them it was wine, before paying twice their asking rate to just clean it. Sherlock was kept locked in her bedroom while they were there. His back was still tender and sore. It hurt to put anything against it and the wings, or his back where they sprouted. Even once they were clean and dry, he couldn’t move them. He could feel them twitch by accident sometimes, but he couldn’t do it on purpose.

His father dragged him to a doctor that promised to be very discreet. He took x-rays of Sherlock, his back and his front. And when he came back, he said that there was nothing to be done. To remove the wings, they’d have to remove part of Sherlock’s spine as well, and there was no guarantee that he’d even survive, much less walk. Siger wanted to try anyway, wondered about just...clipping them off. 

“With what, hedge shears?” asked the doctor. “From what I can tell, they’d only grow back. And the amount of nerve clusters we think are in the wing….just brushing them with a finger hurts him. Cutting them off would be torture.”

Siger dragged them to two other doctors as well, paying them exorbitant amounts of money to keep quiet. They both said the same thing. The wings are part of the boy’s skeletal structure, his nervous system. To remove them would be to maim and/or kill him. The second doctor was willing to try cutting them off, but no matter how much anesthetic he used, Sherlock could still feel everything.

“You want to keep them!” accused Siger. “Stop making things up, Sherlock, we are getting rid of them.”

Sherlock had been sobbing by that point, there were already two deep cuts in the wings. “Please no,” he cried. “I don’t want them, I don’t but it _hurts_ , father it hurts.”

His father hadn’t believed him until they used an MRI machine to prove that his pain sensors let up whenever a hand was brought to the wing, even with the anesthetic. Even then, Siger hadn’t been happy. 

The third doctor had raised the same objections as the first two, and added that not only were the wings part of his bone structure, they were part of his musculature too. He showed Sherlock a few places where he had muscles that shouldn’t be there around his chest and back. “These are what are connected to the wings,” said the doctor. “You need to exercise them just as you would any normal muscle. But they do mean that you cannot get rid of the wings. They are very much a part of you now.” 

One thing that all three doctors agreed on was that the pain should stop soon. “It’s like when you get a new tooth in. It hurts while it is growing, but it goes away.” The worst of the pain should be done, even if the wings wouldn’t fully stop growing till he did (likely), but soon, it wouldn’t hurt to touch them anymore. Sherlock could only suppose that was a good thing. If it didn’t hurt, he could find shirts to fit over them. His father was already looking into ways to bind the wings tight.

His mother couldn’t even look at him right now. He wore zip-up sweatshirts around the house, with his front covered, and the zip stopping halfway up his back to avoid the wings. But Mummy would just glance at him then look hurriedly away. 

He wrote Mycroft, explaining everything. Mycroft didn’t respond with a letter, but he did send a book about birds and their wings, and how humans could take care of a bird’s wings. 

As the pain faded, Sherlock started using the book to try to train them up a bit. He would take both wings by his forefinger and thumb and hold them up. It was hard on his arms, but he slowly learned which muscles controlled the wings, and how to operate them independently. 

He had to do it in secret though, at night, away from his parents. Mummy had withdrawn him from the school for the rest of the year, so he could be homeschooled. She really only instructed him in math, but so long as he did the other assignments, she didn’t really care what he did with the rest of his day.

Sherlock wore bandages at first, to keep the wings bound, but one night Siger threw a proper binder at him--though really it was almost a corset. It worked well enough for their purposes too. The wings remained crumpled and flat against his back, and he could wear slimmer cut shirts again. So long as he plucked the feathers from his hair in the mornings, he could pass for human.

Redbeard had long been his only solace, but now, he felt it more keenly than ever. The dog was the only one that didn’t care about the wings. He just watched Sherlock carefully as he worked out how to move them, how to keep them flared, how to hold them up, or flap them, or rotate them. Redbeard watched him learn to groom them, how to wash them; he watched everything and did not judge, just loved him all the same. 

The wings grew exponentially in the next few months. Sherlock went through three binders before summer alone. His wings grew in strength too. He could already tell that flying would be tricky, since he lacked a tail. That was beyond frustrating. The only decent thing about wings was the possibility of flight, and it seemed that even that would be denied him. Still the wings grew huge. By early June, they were big enough to envelop him entirely. He stood almost six feet tall, in and the wings were closing in on fourteen feet. He wasn’t done growing and neither were they, but he was still skinny enough that he thought they might hold him a bit if he tried to fly.

He would take Redbeard out to the woods near the house and remove his shirt and binder, before stretching and flapping the wings for a while, trying to get a feel for it. Apparently, teaching oneself to fly was a time consuming task. 

It wasn’t one he planned on giving up on though. It took him all summer, but by August, he could get himself off the ground and move forward a few feet. If he started from higher, he could glide well enough, but the lack of a tail to steer was proving to be a problem. He had some success with using his legs, so long as he kept them tightly together, but it wasn’t exactly a smooth fix. He was starting to think it wouldn’t be though. He didn’t have a tail, and it didn’t seem likely he’d grow one at this point. So he’d have to make do.

He hadn’t forgotten about his quest to figure out what caused mutations either, but he seemed to have hit a bit of a block. He wanted to do his own experiments, but he lacked the equipment, and he didn’t think his parents would help. So he had to wait. In the meantime, he worked on flying, on getting used to _walking_ with the wings. As it turned out, it was easier to walk when they were out. He could use them to balance himself. Their extra weight when bound was too concentrated, and he tended to overbalance and stumble. It was very disorienting. 

Sherlock remained worried though, about what would happen when he went away to school. His parents hadn’t said anything about it _not_ happening after all. He brought it up, one night, at dinner.

“Your father and I thought it best you remained a little closer to home,” said Mummy, airily, not really looking at Sherlock. “You’ll go to Harrow. They’ve already accepted you, we’ve bought you a special uniform., and the administration is aware of your….condition.” Sherlock swallowed. That sounded...ominous. The mutants from Mycroft’s school had gotten kicked out. Apparently, Harrow was a bit more open minded about that sort of thing (which struck him as odd--weren’t the Swiss supposed to be a bit less stuffy? He supposed it had something to do with the Swiss school being a bit more proud of it’s ‘old-world’ atmosphere). 

He didn’t want to go away to school though. He didn’t want to leave Redbeard, or their private home where he could practice flying. But his parents didn’t want him here, and there wasn’t anything he could do to convince them to allow him to stay.

The night before he left, he slept with Redbeard in his bed again, face pressed against the aging dog’s fur. He didn’t cry, he didn’t let himself. But the thought of spending anytime at all with a group of strange boys in a dormitory was enough to send him into almost full panic mode. His wings ruffled nervously (and god, he’d have to sleep with the binders on. It was going to _hurt_ ), and Redbeard whined quietly, and licked Sherlock’s cheek. “Good boy,” murmured Sherlock. “I’ll miss you.”

He shivered slightly. _Well,_ he thought, _into battle_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so....this story is gonna be a bit longer than anticipated.  
> Or rather, it won't be longer, but it'll have more chapters.  
> I've decided to split up what would have been chapter three into several different parts. Other wise, we'd have had a frankly huge chapter, and I didn't want to do that to anyone. Parts one and two of chapter three are written, but they won't be posted until the rest of it is finished.   
> So I'm posting this earlier than I was originally going to.  
> Hope it wasn't a disappointment.


	3. The School Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's first year at school. Full of discoveries, asshats, and growing up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lets give it up for more bullying and bad parenting in this bit. We are also adding tags for homophobia and internalized homophobia. I am gonna go ahead and put in a warning for some 'bad science' too, because I wanted to get this chapter up, but I didn't research things as well as I could have, and am basically going off my memories of how this stuff works from 10th grade science. And that....that was sort of a while ago.  
> So. Anyone who is science-y and wants to beta, be my guest. Tell me what I've fucked up and I'll fix it.

Sherlock stared up at the building distrustfully. He was terrified, though he thought he managed to play it off as ‘nervous’ instead. He sat alone in the back of the cab, his trunk in the boot, waiting for him to lug it out and into The Park.* 

The Park was where he’d be spending his next several years. His parents; though neither had come with him, or allowed him to participate in any of the ‘bonding’ experiences the others had all been a part of, had at least arranged it so that he would have a private room during his entire stay at Harrow. He doubted the other boys would like that much. They all had to share for their first several terms. He knew that the House Master would probably know what he was, and that, rather than his parents spending extra money to ensure him a private room, they’d reminded him that having a mutant revealed by accident because of a shared room would likely end in more trouble than a new boy having a room to himself. 

If he did have a roommate at some point in his stay...he could be fairly certain that they’d be a mutant too, which was at least a relaxing thought. That he wouldn’t be the only one in his time here. But at least at the moment, he knew that he’d have his own room. At least he would be able to sleep with his wings unbound, even if he had to keep them tightly controlled during the rest of the day.

The cabbie sounded annoyed when he coughed (could coughs sound annoyed? Not technically, supposed Sherlock, but this cabbie had managed it somehow. He retrieved his trunk and walked around the side to pay the driver. “Your wife is leaving you,” he told the man. “You think that by sprucing up your wardrobe and hair she’ll stay, but she won’t. She wants a higher class of man than just a cabbie. Perhaps you should leave her first, and spare her the trouble.” 

The cabbie looked furious, snatching the money and speeding away, sending gravel flying into Sherlock’s legs. _Well,_ thought the boy, _He didn’t need to be so rude. It isn’t as if he didn’t already know his wife was planning to leave. Why else update his wardrobe and hair? And if your wife is so shallow that she’s going to leave you because you aren’t posh enough, then changing your appearance is hardly going to work. It makes more sense to just find someone who appreciates you._

Some people just couldn’t take the truth, he decided, a bit grimly. He knew this of course. Somehow it still surprised him though, the illogic of people. The wife was an idiot too. If she was that much of a materialist, she shouldn’t have married a cabbie. He considered this for a moment. Well. Based on the age of the cabbie...it was probable that his wife was about the same age. If that was true, then he must have gotten her pregnant when they were a lot younger. Their parents probably made them get married to avoid scandal. So...they were both idiots, but she, at least, hadn’t actively planned on getting into such a situation. 

***  
The room he’d been given was relatively small. He supposed it was mostly because he was a new student, they couldn’t give him a proper room. He’d been met by the House Master and shown to his room. A bit unstandard, but nothing about his situation was ‘standard.’

It was explained to him that if people asked, he’d tell them that there was an odd number of boys in the Park this year, and rather than make a three boys room together, he got a room to himself. He’d say it was just luck, not bribery or that he was special. Sherlock thought that the House Master must think that he was some kind of idiot, but he somehow managed to keep himself from saying anything to avoid pissing the man off. For the time being, anyway.

****  
He stared out his window at the field. Rugby or Football or something just as moronic. He was apparently meant to play some sport or other in his time here. Something about ‘team building,’ and ‘being healthy.’ Utter rot, he thought. In any case, he’d have to choose the sport with the least amount of contact. Too bad archery was dropped as a choice. That could’ve been interesting. But he’d probably have to choose something boring. Like cricket. Well, he supposed it was better to be bored than revealed as a mutant because he got tackled strangely or something. 

His wings ached, begging to be released. He didn’t dare though. He didn’t know how keen the Harrow boys were on privacy. He had a lock to his room, but it was possible, he supposed that his ‘Shepherd,’ an excitable lad called Mike Stamford, might have a key. In any case, Stamford was the one that would show him the ropes here, and that might include breaking into his room to take him to dinner. So his wings stayed bound tightly. Just to be safe, no matter how hateful it was.

He did know that there were ‘activities’ of a sort planned. The other first years (shells, apparently, all this ridiculous terminology was going to take up too much room in his head. He’d ignore most of it for now) had all had a series of settling in events planned before they’d arrived for the school year, but his parents had not wished to spend the money, or the time, and he hadn’t been allowed to go. So he was already sort of the odd man out (ironic, considering that’s what his parents had wanted to avoid), and he didn’t want to show up late or disheveled. Nothing to draw more attention to himself. 

And he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want to be labeled as an outcast or a loner, or a freak. That meant he had to play nice with the other boys, he had to interact with them and not call them idiotic for not noticing the obvious. He could do that. Probably. He would try, anyway. 

There was a sharp rapping at the door and a soft voice. “Holmes? Time for dinner.” . He rolled his shoulders back, took a deep breath. Time for dinner. “Into battle,” he said, quietly, and opened the door. 

*****  
It was a little astonishing, how easy it was to slide into a routine. Stamford was kind to him at least, which was not that surprising. Stamford was kind to everyone. It was part of his job description, as a Shepherd. But at least Sherlock always had somewhere to sit at breakfast and dinner, even if Stamford mostly just...prattled on, Sherlock ignored him mostly, but even if the things he talked about were asinine, his voice wasn’t that irritating. And he didn’t seem to care if Sherlock didn’t listen.

Granted, he didn’t really like how strict Harrow’s schedule felt. And it lasted all day, not just the six hours that he’d been stuck in primary school. It was _every_ day, here, and it started at eight, and lasted until bedtime. There were a few hours of leisure time, but...honestly, that time had to be used studying mostly. 

Stamford proved his ability to be helpful in showing Sherlock a few ways around the schedule. He could have figured it out himself probably, but it was faster to get the older boy to just tell him. He utilized this information more and more, as the semester progressed.

Granted, he did like his classes for the most part. He didn’t care so much for history or geography or religious studies, but he did like the others. Especially music. He absolutely adored the violin, and he played it like the instrument was made just for him. He’d played for a few years of course, but now he had proper teachers and access to real music rooms. He played often, whenever he could find a spare moment. When he played, he was oblivious to everything else. It was the only time. When he practiced in the Practice rooms, he often ended up with a small audience outside the door, listening. They always dispersed by the time he left, and he never knew they were listening to him. 

But just because they liked to listen his music, it didn’t mean that they wanted to spend more time with him. He found that out the very first Friday evening. He knew that the boys congregated in the common area, to watch television or play table tennis or darts. And he decided to join them tonight. He prepared three possible conversation starters (they were inane, but he thought they’d be successful) and a few possible witty retorts and jokes. People liked jokes. And he could smile and wink. Mike had liked that, it stood to reason the others would too. 

When he got there, though, everyone had paired off already. In groups of about two to five, just chatting quietly, mostly. The telly was on, some football match or other was playing quietly, thought a few of the boys were getting quite excited. He stood there, awkwardly for a few moments, then made a round of the room, trying to find a group to insert himself into, to find a conversation he could join. No one really moved to make room for him. He watched the game for a few minutes, but he didn’t understand what was going on, and it didn’t look like any of the others were going to be willing to explain. So he’d left.

A few days later, he tried again, going back to the common room, hoping that, since it was the middle of the week, there’d be fewer people there. This time, a few boys acknowledged him with a nod. Not overtly friendly, really, but better than nothing. He milled around again. One of the boys complained about how they were forced to play a sport. Sherlock was standing right there, and he voiced his agreement, perhaps a bit to animatedly. The looks he got were a bit surprised, and a little annoyed, he thought. Then, the faces were gone, replaced with backs of heads, and the conversation continued, sans Sherlock. Humiliated, he beat a hasty retreat back to his own room. He didn’t try again. They already had their groups. There wasn’t room for him.

And it was better that he didn’t have friends anyway. It was safer.  
He wrote Mycroft 

_I don’t think you’d like these people either, Mycroft. They are, by and large, complete idiots, caring only about status and money and family history. Anyway, I know that I was supposed to try to fit in, but it is better that I keep to myself. Being alone will protect me._

This letter concerned Mycroft, but before he could formulate an adequate reply, his boss requested his urgent help with elections in Korea. And the second time he read the letter, it seemed less sad, and more prudent. In his reply, a brief note, he suggested that Sherlock not give up his attempts to make acquaintances, but to remember that he was above them, that his intelligence set him above the others, and not to worry too much about making life-long friends. That idea was arcane anyway, and not at all practical.

****  
His favorite classes, after music, were his chemistry and language classes. He took Latin (as it wasn’t even an option), German and Ancient Greek. He figured that taking those classes would make learning other languages in later years, or by himself, much easier. Most Western languages anyway, were rooted in Latin and German. Greek...well, he was pretty sure that knowing it would be a good building block too. Languages were like puzzles, putting the bits and pieces together to make a cohesive picture. He took to them easily. He was grateful for that, because Mycroft could learn a new language with complete fluency, in less than eight months, and he was getting faster with them. If Sherlock was much worse at the languages than Mycroft, he’d never hear the end of it.

 

But chemistry is where he really excelled. He loved it, and he was surprised at how good he was at it. He’d never had good teachers in primary, and of course, they’d never done anything beyond basic chemistry labs either. Here...it was proper chemistry, with an amazing lab. It even had an electron microscope. Sherlock had plans for it already, as soon as he’d ingratiated himself with the Chemistry professor enough to warrant a favor. 

When not in class, he mostly kept to himself. He locked himself in his room, with his blinds drawn, whenever he had at least an hour to spare. He’d undo the bindings and let his wings free. He couldn’t really practice flying in his room, but he could work out the kinks in his wings at least, and groom them. He hid his feathers away (though he didn’t throw them out yet. There were experiments he wanted to do on them first), and did his homework, or practiced violin while he absently rolled and flexed and flapped his wings. It was becoming reflexive. He didn’t even have to think about it anymore.

He didn’t fly, except late at night. He’d slip out of his window and climb to the roof. It wasn’t hard, not really, but he did use his wings to help him get up, a few times. Flying was...exhilarating. And at night, it added a special level of danger, which appealed to him. He got rather adept at flying tin the dark. It was also a good way to spy, he found. He could learn a lot about his house-mates by flying at night. He learned who smoked, (and what they smoked), who had secret visitors at night, who was in love with their roommate….very interesting things indeed. He filed it all away, for ‘just in case,’ and continued to keep to himself. 

He didn’t make waves this time, not like in primary. Not making waves included going to every class, not speaking out of turn, not rattling off a stream of deductions about his classmates that ended up with him injured and them royally pissed off, no matter that he thought it obvious, their ‘secret.’ He was very, very bored.

To make up for that, he started trying to figure out a better way to bind his wings. He needed a fast release mechanism, in case he fell out of a tree or something, he needed to be able to get his wings out _fast_ or he risked smashing himself to a bloody pulp. And he wanted to be able to take it off and put it on faster anyway, even without the threat of falling out of a tree. And if he could make it more comfortable, that wouldn’t be too bad either. He considered snaps, but those were unreliable, and might pop before he was ready. Zippers would take too long. Velcro would have to be replaced too often. He was running out of ideas, when Xander Tompkins left the school to become a paratrooper.

Apparently, there was some scandal with his father becoming involved with a man, and then getting sacked from his job (though that might’ve had more to do with the embezzling) and he couldn’t afford to keep Xander in the school. Becoming a paratrooper was about as far away from his father as he could get. Still, the whole school gossiped about the scandal of it for days. 

It was pathetic, thought Sherlock. The boys were as bad as little old ladies in a knitting club. But the story did give him an idea. He started studying how parachutes worked. If he could apply that idea to the binding….it could be perfect.

****  
Winter Hols  
****  
His first trip home from school was a bit awkward. His parents had rather forgotten how to handle him in his absence. 

Redbeard though, Redbeard plowed him down almost as soon as the dog saw him, a streak of red tearing across the lawn toward his favorite human. Sherlock laughed, as he lay, sprawled out under the excitable dog, letting his friend lick his face in exuberance. Sherlock giggled as the dog slobbered all over his school jacket. He pressed his face against the warm ruff of Redbeard’s neck, breathing in the musky scent. He’d missed his best friend.

The winter holidays flew by. Sherlock only rarely saw his parents, which was fine by him. He played with Redbeard, practiced his violin, and flew whenever he could. He usually took dinner alone, or sometimes, not at all, depending on his mood and the housekeepers. Generally, he did have to heat it up by himself, but it was hardly his fault if his parents didn’t call him to dinner. The one time he ate with them before Christmas, his father spent most of his time complaining about how some ridiculous mutants rights activist was speaking before parliament, and when would those freaks just realize they weren’t wanted and keep their heads down until they died. Violet whispered, “Siger,” with a meaningful glance at Sherlock, who had frozen, fork in hand.

“He agrees with me. It isn’t natural. You keep your head down, right boy?” Sherlock nodded, swallowing. He didn’t finish his meal. 

Christmas though, they tried to be a proper family. Sherlock kept glancing at the clock. Mycroft should have been here yesterday. In his last letter, Mycroft had said he’d be home on the twenty fourth. But breakfast came and went, and no sign of Mycroft. They started opening presents, and no one made any mention of Mycroft’s absence. 

“He’s not coming,” snapped Siger, after Sherlock glanced up again at the sound of footsteps. “Didn’t he tell you?”

No. No, he hadn’t. It felt like a betrayal. Getting his hopes up when he knew he wasn’t going to come home. In point of fact, Mycroft had told Siger last week on the phone that he couldn’t make it home, that he was sorry ,and to tell Sherlock and Mummy, would you? Siger had told Violet, but neither had thought to tell their youngest son.  
Sherlock viewed it as a betrayal, even if he’d never pinpoint this moment as the one he stopped trusting Mycroft, it certainly helped. Mycroft never fully understood why Sherlock’s letters became less frequent, and less informative. 

Still, even without Mycroft, Sherlock decided presents had gone...as well as could be expected. He’d given his mother a necklace he’d found in a thrift shop (though she’d never know that’s where he’d gotten it), his father a tie pin (one he’d found on the ground and cleaned up), and Redbeard a new ball. He’d gotten Mycroft a beautiful glass violin. A trinket, basically, but it caught the light wonderfully, and sent lovely prisms dancing across the walls when you moved it just so. He’d spent a mint on it, and he secretly wanted it for himself, had almost bought himself one too. But….Mycroft didn’t come for Christmas. So Sherlock would keep the little violin for himself. 

His parents had gotten him a ‘fitting.’ They’d made him an appointment with a London tailor, one that promised to be discreet. He’d go as soon as he returned to Harrow, and get fitted for several suits for a variety of occasions. They were to be comfortable, and fit over his wings without drawing attention to them, whilst still making him look streamlined. Sherlock decided to take up his binding issue with this tailor. Hopefully, the man would have an idea to make his plans actually work.

*****

He thanked a god he didn’t believe in that he had the run of the place for the day. Most of the other boys wouldn’t arrive till the next day, and then classes started again the day after. He could leave his wings out and not worry about anyone knocking on his door and wondering why it took so long for him to open it. He could play his violin and not have anyone bang on the door to tell him to shut up or leave it for the practice room. It was only a day, but damned if he wasn’t going to make the most of it. 

The next morning he stood at his window, and watched as the boys started filing in. Most didn’t actually go past his window to get into the House. The front doors were at the other side of the building. But it made it all the more interesting to see who came this way.

He saw a few boys sneaking off in the direction of the far end of the field. Smoking probably. It wasn’t technically against the rules--you wouldn’t get in a lot of trouble for it anyway, but it was still frowned upon enough that the younger boys felt like they were being ‘dangerous’ or something when they did it. Sherlock thought it was utterly ridiculous. _Dull_ he thought. Absolutely nothing of interest happening today, even if it is a new semester. The interesting things always start later on. Still, for some reason, he’d hoped that he might see something new.

He closed his shades and rolled his shoulders a few times. He couldn’t wait for that new binding. Something that wouldn’t hurt so badly. But...new day, new semester...his door was open. He couldn’t be careless. So he’d just live with it. His father at least, would be pleased. He was getting good at just ‘living with it.’ He half wanted his father to twist and contort his arm into an awkward position behind his back and leave it tied there for an hour. Just an hour. Just to see what it bloody _felt_ like. 

Well, if he couldn’t stretch his wings, he’d stretch his legs, he decided, leaving and locking his bedroom. He went to the common room (though why he kept torturing himself with this place, he didn’t know). There were a few boys there already, some discussing their breaks (though most of the little groups seemed to have seen each other several times over the course of the break). They all had little in-jokes too-- “Remember last year, that horrid little toe-rag manager at the lodge? He’s still there, if you can believe it, just as awful as ever” and “That gorgeous house we saw, by the Seine? Mum’s going to see about renting it for us next year, isn’t it brilliant?” and “Anyway, Dad swears we’re never going back to Venice, says it smells horrid. I think he just got seasick and doesn’t want to admit it.”

Most of these boys had been friends even before Harrow. And all of their families were of the same sort. If things had been different….Mr and Mrs Holmes might have liked some of them. So perhaps it was a good thing, that things were the way they were. Sherlock thought he might die if he had to put up with their pompous nonsense all the time.

 

For another month, he managed to keep himself to himself. A low profile was a good thing to have in a place like this if one didn’t have friends or a particularly powerful name to keep you safe. His suits arrived at the end of the first week, and he was delighted with them. The shirts were carefully crafted so that if he took the binding off, his wings could protrude through the back of the shirt. Flying with a shirt on was a much warmer experience, he discovered. He didn’t even rip the shirts, the measurements were so precise. The jackets were tailored to a point where, even if his binding was a little off, no one would see anything strange about his back. The tailor had added a bit of extra padding in the back of the jacket, so that even if someone clapped him on the back, they wouldn’t notice anything odd.

The new binding arrived at the very end of the month. The tailor had sent with it a little note saying that there was no guarantee that it would work, but that the drawings Sherlock had given him seemed workable, and he’d done his best. The tailor at least, thought it would work, and so far, Sherlock had been nothing but pleased with the man’s work. 

It wasn’t perfect, this binding, but it was far more comfortable than the old one, even if it didn’t yet come off as easily as Sherlock wanted it to. 

He’d do some readjustments on his designs and give them back to the tailor, he decided, walking down to the common room to heat some water for tea.

“Holmes!” said one of the boys, as he walked in. Daughton or something, thought Sherlock. Why was he talking to _him?_ Christ Daughton was standing with two other boys, whose names Sherlock was fairly sure were Hastings and Clemency. 

He wasn’t sure of their first names, but he supposed it didn’t matter. They never spoke to him, so the fact they even knew who he was seemed a bit strange.

“Come have a look at this!” Daughton looked very pleased with himself, and Sherlock found himself walking over, though he knew he probably shouldn’t. “Look what my brother gave me when he came to visit,” he said, turning the magazine around. Ah. Sherlock didn’t know why he was even surprised. He glanced up at the other boy.

“What exactly is supposed to happen now?” he asked. “Is this supposed to do something for me?”

The other boys stared at him in amazement. “You think you’d seen loads of tits,” sneered Hastings. “Isn’t she hot?”

“She’s a moderately attractive woman, that has been airbrushed to the point of fiction and you can’t even see anything interesting. A bit of breast and a bit of arse are not exactly arousing.” 

“Seriously? We aren’t even allowed to have this!”

“It barely qualifies as pornography,” he said, his tone a bit bored.

“What’s your problem?” demanded Daughton. “You gay? Is that it?”

Sherlock blinked. He hadn’t expected that accusation. He wasn’t gay. Of course he wasn’t gay. He had enough problems without adding homosexuality to the mix. “What?” he asked, a bit stupidly.

“You a faggot?” asked Daughton, slowly. 

“I bet he is,” said Clemency. “I bet he’s a raging homosexual.”

“Holmesosexual!” shouted Hastings. 

“That’s not even clever!” snapped Sherlock.

“What’s your problem?” asked Daughton, raising his chin. “If she doesn’t do it for you, who would your rather see naked? Do you wanna see a dick, Holmes?”

“Just because a nude woman, most of whose bits are turned away from the camera doesn’t arouse me doesn’t make me gay,” he snapped. “I’d be a little more worried about you boys. Who looks at erotic images with two other boys and tries to get aroused in public? And you call _me_ gay? At least I don’t get aroused looking at indecent photos with other boys, Doughton.”

The other boy opened his mouth, closed it, and went beet red. “I’m not gay!” he managed to get out.

“The lady doth protest too much,” returned Sherlock, a little snidely. They were currently reading MacBeth in lit class. It was mostly moronic, but it did occasionally have a useable quote or two. 

“You’re the faggot,” Doughton said. “I’ve seen you checking out Gregson’s arse.” 

“Who?” he asked. Sherlock wasn’t even entirely sure who Gregson was supposed to be.

“I’ve seen it too,” chimed in Hastings. “I bet you fantasize about him sneaking into your room at night don’t you? Touching you. Kissing you. You want his arse.” 

“You’ve put a lot of thought into that,” snapped Sherlock, backing away. “It seems that you are the one that wants Gregson in your pants.” 

He turned and fled the common room, thoughts of tea completely wiped from his head.

He thought that would be the end of it. He was wrong. 

 

Apparently, boys were just as gossipy as blue-haired old ladies in knitting circles. By noon the next day, no less than three boys Sherlock didn’t know had called him a name, or shoved him or knocked his books out of his hands. One of them was from The Park, but two of them were Moretons* boys.  
Why did they even care? he wondered, rubbing his shoulder, grimly. He didn’t know them at all. That last one he couldn’t even remember seeing even in the Speech room? How did they even know who he was? 

It didn’t stop there. It felt like everyone in his year had heard the rumor. He tried to ignore the taunting usually. He didn’t say anything to the shouts of ‘Homo Holmes’ or ‘freaky faggot.’ He didn’t say anything when someone tripped him, or shoved him against a wall then apologized,saying they were sorry, they’d forgotten that he liked that. He bit his tongue so hard it bled when Thompson and Avery, two boys in his year that he’d previously helped on a Chemistry lab knocked his beaker over, causing his HCl to spill all over his papers. 

But he couldn’t keep it bottled up forever. He couldn’t even fly, because two days ago, an older boy from The Park had shoved him, hard, and sent him careening down a flight of stairs. He’d split his lip, jammed his fingers and badly bruised his back and wings. The pain of keeping them bundled up was agonizing, but he knew flying on them would be far worse. The constant throbbing was driving him to distraction though, and so, when Andrew Martin, who Sherlock had done no less than three maths assignments for before all this had begun, asked him if sticking pens in his mouth was anything like sticking a penis in there, he’d exploded.

He’d told Andrew (and everyone in the corridor) that if he were Andrew, he’d keep his snide comments to himself, because not even three weeks ago, when he’d been in the city, he’d seen Andrew coming out of a store that was known to cater to gay men, and Andrew had with him one of the little black bags the store used to hide the fact that the things they sold were not exactly ‘family friendly.’ He also pointed out that Andrew should probably try to spend his money a little more wisely, because his family was obviously bankrupting themselves to keep him here at Harrow, and that furthermore, if he wanted to keep his grades up, he should probably stop smoking as much marijuana every night. At nine o’clock. At the far end of the footer field. And no, he finished, he wasn’t spying on Andrew. It was obvious that he had no money because of the hemline of his trousers, and it was obvious where he smoked due to the dirt and grass dotting his shoes, and if anyone had to ask how he knew he was smoking, then they clearly didn’t possess working eyes or noses.

After that, he found it difficult to keep his mouth shut, when people decided to taunt him. He told his maths class that Raphael Bowman wore women’s underwear (and if he didn’t want it to be so obvious, then he shouldn’t wear trousers that were two sizes too small and bend over without bending his knees). He ensured that everyone in his Chemistry class were made aware that Raymond Malone was reading pornography under his desk, and that Lou Anderson was constantly drawing dirty pictures in his lab book instead of doing the work. 

He started calling people out for cheating, for stealing test answers or petty cash, for hiding animals in their rooms or taking illicit substances (and where they tended to do it). He loudly announced where boys kept their stashes of cigarettes, or marijuana, or their secret pet snake (and where they kept the rats to feed it). He could read their secrets in their hair or their clothes or the dirt under their fingernails. He never made anything up. He didn’t have to. By the time Spring Break finally arrived, no one really bothered him much anymore. They’d learned that his retaliation would be swift, it would be brutal, and it would be humiliating. Even when he didn’t spill their secrets, he was so quick with a cutting remark about their personality or intelligence, that if anyone else was around, they’d end up giggling at _them_ half the time, instead of Sherlock. 

It was easier for him to do that with the Park boys. He knew their insecurities better than relative strangers from other houses. He found that it was a lot easier to tear someone down if he knew what they were afraid of beforehand. And just listening outside closed doors (or windows) definitely allowed him an insight into their lives he wouldn’t have had before. It helped too, that he was good at looking like he wasn’t paying any attention until someone addressed him.

***  
Spring break went far too quickly. He’d seen Mycroft briefly, but his brother was only home for a few days before he went back to university. Sherlock made sure to steal some of his hair. He also got some saliva, by telling his brother it was for a project for school. Which it was, in a manner of speaking. He took DNA samples from his parents (getting it from his father was particularly tricky, but eventually ,after being convinced that it was for a very legitimate project involving Punnett squares and Sherlock being bored with plants and the insistence he’d learn more from people, and where better to start than with family? At least he could control more of the variables, and wasn’t that what science was all about? You have to be able to trust the results. 

Sherlock thought that it was highly likely his father agreed because he was hoping that Sherlock would discover that he wasn’t, in fact, Siger Holmes’ son after all. The fact that Siger thought that his wife having an affair was more tolerable than having a mutant son hurt, but at least it ensured that Sherlock got his sample. 

He had finally managed to get access to the electron microscope, beginning after Spring Break. He was still searching for clues, any sort of clue, about what it was that made a mutant a mutant. Where was it in the DNA that caused such drastic mutations to happen? Where did mutant DNA differ than normal DNA? He needed to compare his own with that of his family. Obviously, he’d need to look at other specimen’s too. One family wasn’t enough to really know, but at least it could get him started. He made sure to keep his samples neatly packaged and labeled in his room, in the tiny mini fridge he’d stolen from Mycroft. 

He and Redbeard were obviously too old for Pirates anymore. But they still ran all over the grounds, Sherlock with his wings out, and Redbeard dashing along beside him. They found a dead frog in a stream, which excited Sherlock immensely, and he had quite a lot of fun dissecting it. 

He didn’t get caught, for which he was grateful, because he had a feeling that he’d have had a lot of explaining to do, and he knew from experience that his explanations were generally ignored in favor of his father calling him an utter psychopath, and storming off muttering about freaks of nature and serial killers getting started with killing animals. 

He monologued to Redbeard, bemoaning the stupidity of the other boys, about the rumors they spread and believed and teased him about, the dullness of many of the classes, and how much he hated being forced to play a sport. Though next year, he thought, he’d rather like to take up fencing. They’d be introducing it back into the school, and it seemed to him a far better option than any of the other sports they insisted students play.

The dog listened happily, and licked his face, and fell asleep next to him, breathing softly. Sherlock pressed his face against the shaggy hair of the Irish Setter, and wished he could take the creature to school with him. “Just one person,” he told the dog quietly. “Just one friend, and I think I’d be alright with just about everything else.” It was weak, he knew. Mycroft didn’t need friends. Mycroft was good at getting people to like him though, he could fit in if he wanted. He hated the fact that he wanted people to like him, even though it was clearly impossible. Even when he tried, people hated him. At least, he thought, he could give them a reason. Still. He wanted a friend. Despite everything, he wanted an actual person to talk to, for once. 

He thought he’d give anything for just one. “Not that I don’t love you,” he told the dog. “But sometimes, I’d like to not have to imagine a response.”

 

He was fine with people mostly leaving him alone. He didn’t want to spend time with them anyway, he told himself. They were stupid and easily tricked, obsessed with how the others viewed them and family names. It was all very dull. He told himself this often enough that he almost believed it.

Letters from Mycroft came, not with any regularity, but often enough; as if he was attempting to tell Sherlock that he hadn’t abandoned him at all. Sherlock almost never wrote back. Mycroft didn’t care, not really, about what he was doing. He wanted to hear that Sherlock was having a grand time at school, that he was making lots of friends, that he was excelling in his classes. He didn’t want to hear that he’d made more enemies than anything, that he was practicing deductions by yelling them at anyone who dared tease him. At least the coursework _was_ easy.

The electron microscope was glorious. He’d never been allowed to touch anything quite so amazing in his life. Doctor Haynes, the Chemistry master, gave him an hour long lecture on how to use it, and then tested him, just to be sure. Sherlock put up with it. He wanted to use the microscope badly enough that he didn’t mind a slightly patronizing lesson. 

He started with the saliva he’d collected from his mother, before moving on to his father’s, his brother;s, and finally his own samples. Blood would work better, he thought, if only because he could get more of a sample out of it. He could use his own blood easily, but the rest of his family….he’d have to be content with saliva or skin cells mostly. 

Sherlock spent hours in that little room with the microscope, painstakingly going over every millimeter or every image he had. The photos weren’t all that good, but they were better than nothing, and it was ages better than anything he’d had before.

He frowned at the image of his blood sample. He ruffled through some of the other papers and photos he’d collected in the past few weeks, scanning them thoroughly. He’d learned quite a lot about DNA during this little side project of his. Forensics, he was discovering, was rather fascinating. But if he’d wanted to have any sort of idea about what he was looking for, he had to have a base knowledge, something more than what class was giving him.

He glanced back at his own DNA sample, then at the close up of his mother’s. He compared both of them to the image of some random man’s DNA that the book he’d taken from the library had provided. “Oh my god,” he murmured. 

Because that was something that definitely wasn’t in any of the books. He’d have to do a lot more research, he knew that. But he was fairly certain that he’d just discovered the gene that made him a mutant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The Park is one of several Houses that the boys room in at Harrow School. It seemed likely that someone with an adult temperament like Sherlock would come from that House beyond any other. Also, fun fact, it’s where Benedict Cumberbatch stayed. Which was the clincher for me putting Sherlock in The Park actually.  
> I am not British, nor have I ever been to a British boarding school, so my info (mostly hailing from the Harrow School website and Wikipedia and one map of the area I downloaded) might be wrong. Or I didn’t understand it properly. Feel free to Britpick or let me know what’s incorrect.
> 
>  
> 
> *Moretons--another of Harrow’s houses
> 
> There is an interlude as well, to explain a few things glanced over in the story (the new binding, particularly). 
> 
> It was originally part of the main body of the story, but I felt that it didn't fit all that well, so...it's it's own mini story now.
> 
> There will be other interludes too, showing some of Sherlock's research process, the articles he's using to aid him in his research.
> 
> Like I said, my science is sketchy and likely wrong. But until I have a beta, it will have to do.
> 
> The School Part 2 is coming up soon. We'll have loss and also, a certain Victor Trevor will make his appearance.


	4. The School Interlude: The Tailor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a peek at what happened in the tailor's shop.
> 
> It was very different than the rest of the chapter, and I felt it needed a space of it's own.

Sherlock walked into the little tailor’s shop (much smaller than he had expected) and he was a bit nervous at first that his parents might be skimping on this, as they did most things when he was concerned, but he shouldn’t have worried. Mr and Mrs Holmes didn’t want to risk shoddy work revealing his secret. 

There was a small desk in the center of the room, with a few dress forms with suits scattered about the shop, and two walls full of bolts of fabric. It was dark in here, but Sherlock could still make out several doors leading off to both sides, and one in the back of the room (staff room? Or possible where the suits were made). There were a few pegs with hats, though this place didn’t really make hats, they did a business by pointing customers to certain milliners. They had a few racks of ties, a wall of shirts (if you didn’t want to pay for a custom fitted shirt as well as the suit). 

The mahogany desk seemed oddly out of place. As Sherlock got closer, he could see scissor marks on it, a pack of needles and two spools of white thread. There was an inlaid ruler too, a picture of three men--well, two men and a child. The photo was a few years old, and today...Sherlock did the mental math. The child in the photo would probably be less than three years older than him.

He introduced himself to the shortish man at the desk, who was eying him suspiciously over his ledger, and was immediately hustled into the back changing room, and was told that Monsieur Anders was with another client and would be probably a quarter hour or more. Sherlock thought that a bit rude...he did have an appointment, but in the end, he only waited a few minutes before Anders, a slightly portly, grey-haired man, a bit taller than the man who’d greeted Sherlock, bustled into the room, his tape around his neck, looped like a scarf. His suit was immaculate (promising), even if it was a bit old, if Sherlock’s eyes hadn’t been as keen as they were, he’d never have noticed that the trousers had been hemmed. Interesting. They’d once belonged to someone taller. Why would a tailor wear a hand-me-down? Sentiment, had to be; the man hadn’t hemmed the trousers himself--he was very obviously left handed, and the sewer of the trousers right--but what….the tailor glanced at Sherlock’s back, then met his eyes, and Sherlock read a lot there. 

Sadness, tiredness bordering on exhaustion, guardedness. Why would this man be guarded? “...and son,” muttered Sherlock. Anders furrowed his brow. 

“Excusez moi?”

“The shop,” replied Sherlock. “‘Anders and Son’ yes? First I thought it might just be a title, people like a family owned shop. But your...receptionist or assistant or whoever he was said that you actually are Mr Anders. No word on whether you are the senior or the junior, but the shop is only about twenty years old or so, and the likelihood of you being ‘and son’ isn’t high.” Also, this man was obviously the younger man from the photo on the desk. “At this point, judging by your age, your father is likely no longer working, unless he wants to--your suits are certainly expensive enough he could be retired. So. Your father doesn’t work here. You and your son do--even if it’s just an after school job for him. He is what? Fifteen? Sixteen? Going through puberty, I’d guess. Possibly a little late.”

“Fifteen,” said Anders, in a rather strained voice. Sherlock gave a little hum, and steamrollered on. 

“You are wearing trousers that were hemmed, so they once belonged to someone taller than you. But you are a tailor by trade, if you were going to wear a pair of custom trousers, you’d wear trousers custom fitted to _you_ and not someone else. But just as though your trousers were not made by you, they were never made _for_ you. So...why wear them? They don’t show off your skill. Or any skill really, but that’s neither here nor there.” He was getting sidetracked. Annoying how often that happened. 

“So that’s the first strange thing. Your shirt and jacket are clearly custom made for you. That makes sense, in a place such as this. And they are clearly your work. Incidentally, it’s very impressive, the cut of your clothes make you look at least a stone, maybe a stone and a half smaller than you are. So if the rest of your clothes are perfectly tailored, and your assistant’s clothes are perfectly tailored down to his Oxfords, why aren’t your trousers?” 

The tailor didn’t answer, looking a bit like a deer in headlights at this flood of words. Sherlock took his silence as reason to continue.

“So. ‘And Son.’ Three generations so far, impressive. I’d wager that those trousers are your son’s work, probably originally intended for him, as their fit on you is...not right. He’s thinner than you as well as taller, and even with the hemming and taking out of the inseams they don’t fit right. But why isn’t he here? It’s a school break, for public and state schools, and even if it wasn’t, it’s four o’clock. He’d be done. But...he’s not here. And you are wearing his trousers. Probably his first attempt at making them too. 

“Sentiment. You are wearing them because he can’t. You wear them here, because he cannot be here. You’ve agreed to help me, because you can’t help him. He’s got a physical mutation of some sort, doesn’t he? I imagine it’s not something easily hidden. You’ve sent him away, haven’t you? London pretends to be progressive, but you fear for him here, if someone finds out. You’re French, you still have your accent, you still go by ‘monsieur,’ though that could be a gimmick, I don’t think so. France is a bit more open about this sort of thing, he’d be safer there. My mutation is...smaller. It can be controlled. So you’ll help me.”  
Sherlock gave a small nod, affirming to himself that he was right, reading it in the tailor’s face.   
“You wear your sons trousers to keep a piece of him here with you, even though he can’t be in person, and you’ll help another young mutant with a difficult to hide mutation in place of him. I hope you took all my parents offered you,” he continued. “They are under the impression they’ll need to pay you to keep quiet, but I don’t think they needed to resort to bribery. Not everyone is ashamed of their child.”

He shrugged out of his jacket and his shirt, undoing the binding. His wings, once he managed to straighten them out a bit, to massage the kinks out of them, didn’t quite fit into the little room fully spread.

“I’m working on that by the way. I’m quite good at chemistry, and I’m good at solving puzzles. I’m trying to isolate what happens in the DNA that causes a person to be a mutant. Given time and the right materials, I might be able to reverse it.” He showed the man his binder. “Can this be made more comfortable? Or at least, to start, made easier to remove? I’ve got some designs that could prove…”

He trailed off. The tailor was standing there, stock still, just staring at him. “What?” asked Sherlock, a little defensive. “Was I wrong? I mean...if might be a stretch but…”

Anders made a pained sound. Sherlock stopped talking. What if he was wrong? What if his parents hadn’t told this man anything? What if he’d guessed and missed the mark entirely? He felt himself beginning to panic.

The tailor turned around, shoulders shaking, taking deep breaths for several minutes. Finally, he turned to meet Sherlock’s eyes. “I would assume that you had been spying,” he said, quietly, his accent heavy, voice thick with unshed tears. “But I know this to be impossible. And...yes. You are wrong, about my son. About why he is not--” The man swallowed. “He...could not accept his...condition.”

Sherlock felt himself freeze. Oh. He hadn’t thought...why was the picture still there then? If there was no hope of the boy ever coming home? 

Andres seemed to take a steadying breath. “But yes. I will do this for him. I could not help him. So I have...decided to help others, when I can. I only make clothes. There’s only so much…” he swallowed again, and continued. “I will work on the bindings. Your wings are...lovely. And keeping them bundled up cannot be good for them. And it might be useful. To be able to unfurl them quickly.”

Sherlock couldn’t speak. He felt terrible now. He hadn’t meant to _hurt_ the man. Though he supposed, he’d always be thinking about his dead son, especially working on mutants like Sherlock. Sherlock had...simply let it out in the open. It was a good thing really. Still, he didn’t say anything else, just let the man take his measurements, of his body and the wings.   
Anders took the notes Sherlock had made about the pull-string and his measurements and disappeared out the door, leaving Sherlock to get himself adjusted by himself. The man at the desk (who introduced himself now as ‘Tomkins’) said that the suits would be ready within the week, and Sherlock could come and claim them after he received notice. 

He couldn’t get out of the little shop fast enough, blinking in the brighter outside light, and taking a deep breath of air that somehow seemed a lot less stuffy and thick as it had been inside the shop.


	5. The School Interlude Two: The Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's home for the holidays.  
> Things don't go as he'd hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just assume that if Siger Holmes is in a chapter, he's going to be a horrible excuse for a human being. He's in this chapter.
> 
> Mycroft tries....but maybe ends up damaging Sherlock worse than ever?
> 
> More notes in the bottom--spoilers.

Sherlock didn’t tell anyone about his discovery. He wasn’t quite sure what it was about yet, and he needed a wider sample size. He was still excited about it. He needed to get more samples from his family. His parents might agree to blood samples if he told them that they might be able to use his information to get rid of the wings. He wasn’t sure how yet, but by isolating the gene, they could at least gain answers they’d never had before. Anyway, gene splicing was a thing, wasn’t it? If you could put two bits together to get a completely unheard of bit--then surely you could figure out how to reverse engineer the process. If you were brilliant enough.

It was Mycroft’s sample that intrigued him the most. His brother was the one he desperately wanted to get another, bigger sample from. Blood was easier to see under the microscope, easier to transport. And he wanted clearer pictures of Mycroft’s DNA. Because his brother had the same odd little genetic mutation that he did. In the same place, the exact same little bit of code that was just a bit not right. But Mycroft didn’t have wings. He could just talk to his brother about it he supposed, but it was more interesting to sneak around a bit. Just until he had more information. He needed irrefutable evidence when going to Mycroft. 

 

He got out of the taxi in front of his house and was immediately beset by an armful of red fur and a wet tongue. Sherlock laughed for the first time in months as he rubbed the silky ears. “Hello Redbeard,” he said, straightening. “I might have to come home more often, if that’s the welcome I get.” He had left his bigger belongings at school only taking with him his research and clothing. It was still more than he’d had to carry when he’d gone away to school. Once again, no one helped him to pull it from the taxi. He’d have to make a few trips to get the trunks to his room. Somehow though, with Redbeard at his side, he didn’t feel quite so heavy, quite so tethered to the ground as he usually did when his wings were bound. 

***  
Redbeard was one of the few things that made his first few days back at home bearable. Redbeard, and the fact that Siger Holmes was away on business. It was amazing how much easier it was to breathe without his father’s foreboding presence settling around the house and grounds like a shadow. His mother was...odd. Sherlock wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with her, but she barely blinked an eye at the wings (bigger now, than they’d been the last time she’d seen them), when she walked in on him in his room as he was doing his exercises. 

“Don’t let your father see those,” was all she said. “He’ll be back on Wednesday.” Then she turned and almost drifted from the room. He noticed the housekeeper (well, her daughter, who actually did most of the work these days) seemed to tiptoe around his mother. He wondered if she was sick. She certainly didn’t seem to care much, not about anything, just drifted from room to room and always managing to look vaguely surprised that she’d arrived somewhere different. 

When Mycroft called that night, Sherlock mentioned it. “She’s probably just thinking,” was his older brother’s opinion. “You get like that too, Will.” 

“Sherlock,” he corrected, automatically. He hadn’t been Will….ever. Not to anyone that wasn’t Mycroft anyway. Mycroft still called him that sometimes, when he wanted to piss him off, Sherlock thought. The sigh rattled through the phone line, almost tangible.

“Fine, Sherlock,” said Mycroft. “But really, I wouldn’t worry about it. She is probably just thinking. I’m not surprised you never noticed before. You never did spend much time in the house.” 

Mollified, Sherlock had put the issue from his mind, more or less. Though he did wonder what his mother might be thinking about.  
***  
He knew that when his father came back, he’d be enormously restricted. So he and Redbeard made the most of the four days they had before Siger returned. They dashed all over the grounds, mad dog and his boy. Sherlock had forgotten what it was like to have fun. And since he didn’t know when his father would be leaving again, he had to squish as much fun as possible into these four short days of summer holidays. 

Redbeard was his constant shadow, dashing along behind him (though slower than he’d used to be. He was nearing eight years old now, and it was beginning to show), waiting at the foot of trees, or splashing into the brooks after him, pouncing on the little fish when he could. 

He’d missed Sherlock, that much was obvious. He stuck close to the boy, closer than he’d used to when Sherlock had lived at home all the time. He relished the vigorous rubdowns Sherlock gave him, whined for pets behind the ears and belly rubs. Sherlock rubbed at the ruff of the dogs neck, and wondered if anyone bothered to pet the dog when he was gone. “It’s okay,” he told his friend. “They don’t really touch me either. I’m alright. You are too.” The dog licked his face and Sherlock chuckled. “Good boy,” he murmured. “The best.” 

***  
The day Siger returned was planned out as elaborately as a royal dinner party. Every hour was scheduled to the extreme. Sherlock knew what time dinner would be, he knew what the courses were, he knew when he’d be expected to play his violin and go over what he’d learned at school, to prove that it was worth even sending him. He knew when his father would have his brandy in his office, knew that even though he was just coming off of business, he’d be having a business meeting after dinner as well, to ‘wrap things up,’ according to Anita (He’d found out the name of the housekeepers daughter). Sherlock was to stay out of the way as much as possible, except when he was meant to be at dinner or interrogated. 

He knew the schedule backwards and forwards. He figured he had time for one last flight before he was forced to be restricted for who knew how long. “Be right back,” he whispered to Redbeard, who whimpered as he let the binding loose, shifted his wings so they stuck out properly out of his shirt. He was getting the hang of it--the new binding, how to feed his wings through the slits in his shirt so he didn’t tear anything or strain it. He shoved the window open and fell through, letting the wings catch him at the last moment, flapping them a bit to climb up into the sky. 

He let the thermals carry him a bit, making lazy circles around the grounds. He went a little farther than he should, closer to the road than usual. That’s when he saw the car; huge and black and coming steadily closer. His about turn was so quick he nearly fell out of the air, but he managed to steady himself and make a beeline for his room. All their planning, but they couldn’t control traffic. Or lack thereof. Siger was home more than an hour before he was expected. And Sherlock knew that he was not going to be happy. 

When his father burst into his room, red faced and furious, Sherlock was settled on his bed, his immaculate suit wrinkle free and not looking at all like any part of it had sped through the sky. His hair was mostly tamed and not windswept. Redbeard sat right next to Sherlock’s leg, and the warm weight of the dog was comforting, Sherlock concentrated on his pet’s breathing, the rib cage expanding and contracting against his calf. 

“What the _hell_ was that?” seethed Siger Holmes. 

“What was what?” asked Sherlock as nonchalantly as he was capable of, ridding his face of any tell-tale emotion. He couldn’t let his father get to him. He would speak as little as possible, he wouldn’t speak out of turn, he’d just...deny what he could.

“We had a deal, you and I,” spat his father. “I let you stay in my house, eat my food, I pay for your schooling….and you keep your _freakishness_ to yourself. You don’t go flaunting it on the motorway!”

“I didn’t!” he protested. “And it’s more just a drive than an actual motor--” he cut himself off. Now was not the time to get technical. 

“I had a client in the car you little monster. What do I tell him now? He bloody saw your little...abnormality.”

“I imagine he’ll be quiet about it,” said Sherlock, his own temper flaring. He dealt with enough cruel words at school, he didn’t need them here too. He knew what he was without his father reminding him. “After all, you didn’t lose his business when he found out about your mistress.” Oh. That was a deduction he hadn’t been expecting, but now that he fully made sense of all the things he was seeing, it did seem a likely explanation. His father smelled wrong (could be the plane? No, too strong and too specific). There was also fake tan on his collar, which...since he had clearly not gotten a fake tan, must belong to someone else who had either rubbed a lot on the shirt or who had worn it herself. That and….shit, the long blonde hair on his father’s jacket, the odd pink tinge at the corner of his mouth (his mother only wore red lipstick)....Sherlock wondered if there had been a business trip at all. 

He didn’t have much time to wonder though, as a new wave of fury sparked in his father’s eyes. Sherlock had never seen anyone so angry, so….hateful. His father’s hand came up, sped toward his face. He flinched, braced himself for the slap. It never came. His father yelled, and Redbeard growled, releasing Siger’s hand from between his jaws. There were a few flecks of blood. Sherlock didn’t see anything else because he was already running, Redbeard hot on his heels.

They weren’t going to be allowed to get away with that, thought Sherlock. They’d put Redbeard down, they’d send him away...that could be allowed to happen. So they’d have to leave, him and his dog. Where could they go? Perhaps Mycroft could take care of them.

He was vaguely aware of his father shouting, but he couldn’t make out any of the words. Redbeard was flagging a bit. “Hurry,” he breathed to the dog. He wasn’t aware of much besides the fear keeping his heart in his throat, his ears filled with an undetermined roaring. He didn’t even notice when grace and dirt turned to asphalt. 

He heard a squeal, the smell of burning rubber filling his nose, and a sharp pain in his hip that sent him sprawling. He heard a sickening crunch and a pained whimper, and the white pain that blurred his own vision cleared. He heard a woman whisper ‘oh my god,’ but all he could see was Redbeard. The Irish Setter lay, battered and broken, in front of a large SUV. 

The driver had swerved when she’d seen him, though she’d still managed to hit him a bit, it was nothing compared to her ram into his dog. “Redbeard,” he whispered. The dog cried a little, pained whimpers and moans somehow bursting from his bloodied mouth. 

A trickle of blood ran from his dog’s nose, he could see Redbeard’s ribs rise and fall, jerking, painful. He cradled Redbeard's head in his lap, stroking his soft ears. There was blood everywhere. It soaked into Sherlock’s trousers, matted Redbeard’s fur. Sherlock’s whole world narrowed in on the dog, his eyes focused, somehow, on Sherlock’s face, full of pain and trust. His human would stop the pain of all this. “I don’t know how,” he whispered, his voice cracking. The dog cried again, though Sherlock wasn’t sure how he was capable of making any sounds at all. “Shh,” he whispered. “Shh, boy, that’s my good boy.” His eyes stung. He stroked Redbeard’s head until strong hands started pulling him away.

He screamed, he fought, he tried to get back to his dog, who started crying again as soon as he couldn’t see Sherlock, trying to get up, to fight, to get at whoever was making Sherlock scream. It was that, in the end, that made Sherlock stop screaming. 

He never remembered, in the end, how they got to the animal hospital. He wasn’t even sure why they’d come here. Father wouldn’t pay for anything to help Redbeard. All he wanted was to sit with his dog, to make sure he was comfortable, that he felt loved, until he died. 

“I’m sorry son,” said the vet. “We had to put him down.” 

“But not yet, right?” asked Sherlock. “I can say goodbye?”

The man hesitated. “You can,” he said, leading Sherlock back into the room. It only took a moment to see that he was too late.

“You already did it?” he asked, his voice hoarse, eyes glued to the unmoving body of what had been his best friend. 

“It was for the best. He was in a lot of pain.”

“He was scared!” yelled Sherlock. “He was hurt and scared and you didn’t let me in with him!” He shoved at the vet, tore out of the room, out of the hospital with the smell in his nose and the sound of a dog barking in his ears. It seemed a cruel sound to follow him. He couldn’t breathe, could barely see, tears blurring his vision. He wanted nothing more than to bury his face in Redbeards fur and cry. But he’d never do that again. Redbeard was gone. 

*****  
It was three days before they found him. He had been hiding in the woods, camping out in the hollows under trees, or finding little caves near the lake to curl up in and slee. He’d needed to eat eventually though, and he wasn’t really sure what berries and things could be eaten without dying, so he’d gone back to town and gotten caught trying to steal a jumbo jar of peanut butter.

Two police officers returned him to the Holmes residence where he was ushered in without a word. He was dirty, bloodied from a great many scrapes and cuts, his eyes bloodshot, his skin pale and his lips cracked. Siger was already gone again, luckily for Sherlock, and Violet didn’t know how to handle Sherlock at the best of times. This...this was not something she was equipped to handle.

He barely ate, mostly just pushed food around on his plate. He was confined to the grounds, but he just climbed onto the roof and huddled there for hours. He played the violin until his fingers bled and his bow frayed. And no one could get him to talk at all.

***  
“You can handle him Mycroft,” Violet said on the phone, three days after Sherlock had been found.. “Come back, just for a bit. See if you can talk some sense into him.”

“I’m not his keeper mother,” Mycroft protested. “And he doesn’t seem to want me around much. He never answers my letters when he’s at school.”

“Mycroft,” said Violet, sternly. “For years, you were the one constant in his life. Redbeard was another. He always gets like this when he loses someone he’s attached to. He was all but inconsolable when you went away. This is similar. Come home. He’ll react better to you than to anyone else.” 

Mycroft came in from London the very next dayl. At first, Sherlock refused to see him, but Mycroft was just as stubborn as Sherlock, if not more so, brought on by simply being older. He finally managed to get Sherlock to come out on a walk with him, told him to let his wings free. They had been cramped up for far too long, surely they were hurting by now. Sherlock finally did as Mycroft suggested, though it seemed oddly grudging. “It’s my fault,” he finally told his brother, his voice rough. wings hanging limp and crumpled against his back. “If I wasn’t such a freak, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“It has nothing to do with your mutation,” began Mycroft.

“It does!” snapped Sherlock. “If I wasn’t….wasn’t like _this_ with these….these bloody _things_ then father wouldn’t...he wouldn’t hate me so much. We’d never have had to run and he wouldn’t have gotten hit. He shouldn’t have been following me.” Sherlock’s voice was trembling now. “Why was he following me?” he asked, weakly. “I got him killed. Why did I run into the road?” He was stupid, _stupid_. The feathers on wings trembled slightly. There was no breeze, Mycroft noted, so Sherlock must be doing it himself. It was interesting, Mycroft thought, how the wings acted in accordance with Sherlock’s mood. Granted, right now, he wasn’t trying to hide it, but he _was_ trying to keep his wings still. He must be quite distraught, that his usual careful control was shattered, thought Mycroft.

“All lives end,” Mycroft finally said, quietly. “Caring….is not an advantage, Sherlock. Can you see that? Caring about things….only makes it hurt when you lose them. And Redbeard was getting old. He’d have died sooner than you’d have liked anyway.”

Sherlock turned his face away. Mycroft moved in front of him. “Remember this feeling,” he told his little brother. “If you don’t want to feel it again, you have to learn to block yourself off.” It would help him with their father too, and the idiots at his school. Sherlock hadn’t told him much about them (not anything really) but he knew his brother, and he knew the sort of prats that got sent to boarding schools. Sherlock wasn’t as adept at hiding his...oddities, aside from the actual mutation, like Mycroft was, and he’d never managed to get along well with his peers. His brother didn’t have to tell him about the way the other boys picked on him for Mycroft to know all about it.

Sherlock was far too concerned with people liking him, and not at all good at getting it to happen. Such a thing was recipe for disaster. Mycroft wasn’t about to let his little brother come to harm, not if he could help it. If the only way to do that was to ensure that Sherlock didn’t feel at all (because Sherlock had an inability to do anything by halves), then that is what he would do. It would hurt him. But it would benefit Sherlock, in the long run. It might even save his life. And there was nothing Mycroft wouldn’t do for his little brother, no matter what he said about caring.

************  
Siger Holmes was astounded in the change in his youngest child. Sherlock was quiet. He wasn’t always tearing around like a bat out of hell, wasn’t tracking in dirt and grime all over the house, wasn’t flaunting his….abnormality. 

He was disappointed to know that he’d missed Mycroft’s visit, but Violet said that his favored son had come for Sherlock, and when he’d left, Sherlock had started eating again. He wasn’t….himself, exactly, which bothered Violet, but Siger noticed how very much like Mycroft Sherlock was acting. 

It was in his mannerisms, the tone of voice he spoke in (when he did speak, which seemed to be only when Siger or Violet spoke to him). He said nothing at dinner, when Siger griped about how mutant freaks were constantly gumming up the works, trying to get ‘equal rights.’ “They aren’t equal,” he said. “They are unnatural monsters. They should try to fit in.”

“Siger,” protested Violet.

“He doesn’t mind, do you boy?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No sir,” he replied softly. 

“People wouldn’t hate your lot so much if you just tried to be normal.”

“No sir. I mean...yessir, you’re absolutely right.”  
Sherlock didn’t finish his beans. Siger didn’t notice, even if Violet did. It would be a relief, she thought, when Sherlock was back at school. He could relax a bit more, with a private room that locked properly. With a schedule and friends and school work. He’d barely have time to think about his dog. Or his father.  
******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Redbeard is NOT okay.  
> Bad shit happens to him.  
> It gets a tiny bit graphic?
> 
>  
> 
> Redbeard's manner of death is based on my dad's dog, and how he died. The dog was supposed to be on a lead, but my dad's brother was trying to teach him how to not be on a lead, and it suddenly took off, and was struck by a car in the same manner Redbeard is here. He gave me some pretty clear details, and he said that the guilt was astonishing, especially considering it hadn't been him to unclip his own dog. The woman that hit him was horrified and sobbing and he knew he should comfort her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.  
> He told me that he'd never told anyone that story ever. So. This chapter is sort of dedicated to my dad's old dog.
> 
> Next time, we will be back at school.


	6. The School Part Two: Victor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor Trevor, enters stage left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This chapter was gonna be much longer, but I am having some real issues with the science-y bits. So this is a lot shorter than it was going to be, but I needed to post something as I try to wrap my brain around DNA and fucking alleles and genes and splicing and PNRs and....sigh. My idiot brain can't handle it. So anyway.  
> A mostly fluffy chapter. Because science will happen next time and I want to make sure I get it right.

Sherlock lay on his stomach, the breeze pushing the curtains inward, occasionally strong enough to ruffle his exposed feathers. It carried with it snippets of conversation.

_How’d the meet go, Trev?  
Like shit. That fucking Powers kid fucks me every time_

_Seriously though, it was great! I totally thought they were going to die. He was all ‘Houston, we have a problem’ and…._

_And seriously, don’t tell anyone, but Helena dragged me to a Bjork concert._  
And?  
And? Have you **seen** her? 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, pressed his face into his pillow. It seemed that a summer away had not changed the inanity of his fellow classmates. All talk about popular movies and sports and music. Granted, he wasn’t sure what else there might be to talk about with one’s mates, but….there had to be something. Something _important_.

They’d figured out how to sequence entire genomes*. Mycroft had sent him the article.  
For the first time, they were able to look at everything: chromosomal DNA as well as the DNA found in the mitochondria. It could definitely help him with his own research. Well, obviously he couldn’t actually...do much. He’d have to just read the articles. He didn’t have access to the right equipment here, no school would have it. But he could learn from what others could do. This could be the bloody key to discovering what caused the mutations everyone was so frightened about, and yet...no one even cared. It was mind boggling to him. 

He heaved a sigh. He heard the knock on the door that meant Stamford was hovering awkwardly just outside it. “Holmes?” he called. Stamford never opened the door on Sherlock, never invaded his privacy. He might just be another rugby playing idiot, but at least he was a conscientious one Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to hate Mike Stamford. Honestly, he doubted there was a person alive that could hate anyone as inoffensively _nice_ as Mike Stamford. He’d never do anything spectacular with his life, that was for sure, but he also wasn’t the type to mind.

“What?” he demanded, pressing his face into the pillow. 

“Some of us are going for lunch.”

“Have fun!” he replied.

There was a beat of silence as Mike tried to figure out if he was being deliberately obtuse or not. After a moment, he continued. “D’you want to come?” he asked, patiently.

Sherlock smirked into his bedclothes. “No.” He got a bit of a kick out of confusing the hell out of Mike Stamford. Poor form, he knew, to tease one of the only people that tolerated you, but it was so _easy_ that he couldn’t resist it. He sat up as he heard Mike’s footsteps clunk down the hall. He walked heavily, for an athlete. He’d better be careful, thought Sherlock idly, or he’d get fat. The image of a fat Stamford made him smile a bit. But he couldn’t help but think that no matter what he looked like, nothing could shake that annoying, eternal optimism that radiated off the boy. 

“I should hate him,” said Sherlock to no one. He sighed, and stood, stretching his wings. He’d need to go to the library at some point. Or possibly the computer lab. He had research to do.

~~~~

“Can I sit here?” Sherlock glanced up from his copy of Jones’ “The Language of Genes,” and blinked a few times at the tall boy standing over him. He was lithe, obviously an athlete, with cropped strawberry blonde hair and frankly stunning eyes. ‘Blue-green’ was probably most accurate, but Sherlock thought they needed something better. Aquamarine, perhaps. The boy’s nose was reddened, and peeling slightly, his lips stretched in an awkward but genuine smile.

“I can’t exactly stop you,” replied Sherlock, a bit thrown. He glanced around. There were other tables open, so why did this boy have to sit here?

“Well. I figured I’d ask,” was the reply, shifting his shoulder bag. “Thought you’d want some company.”

 _Ah,_ thought Sherlock. _That was it. He doesn’t want to sit alone._ Two other tables had people sitting there, but they were obviously already study groups. Sherlock shrugged. He didn’t care one way or the other. This boy would take the hint, or he’d wise up. Either way, he wouldn’t be here long.

“Thanks mate,” he said, cheerfully, settling down, shoving his bag under the table.

“I’m not your mate,” said Sherlock, looking up at the other boy again. He wasn’t the sort of person that had ‘mates.’ “You’re a Moretons boy, a legacy, judging by your bag, and you swim. Considering the amount of time you spend at the pool, I’d at least hope you were decent. You are here on scholarship, though mostly _because_ several generations of your family have come through Harrow, because your family’s fallen on some difficult times recently. You are worried that you’ll not be able to keep up with your coursework, and thus, lose your scholarship. You also don’t want to risk anyone you know coming in and seeing you alone, because _that_ would obviously make you a loser,” he sneered a little. “We are not mates, and I doubt any of your friends would think any higher of you for sitting alone than sitting with me.” He turned back to his book.

“Jesus,” muttered the other boy. But he didn’t leave, which confused Sherlock a bit. 

After a moment, he looked up, to see the other staring at him. “What?” he snapped.

“How’d you know I am a swimmer?” he asked.

“You are clearly an athlete. Runner or swimmer is the most likely, based on your muscle tone, but your hair is a bit brittle looking and has a tinge of green in it. That happens when light hair spends a lot of time in chlorine. So. Swimmer.” He paused. “Also, I can smell the chlorine on you. I take it you’ve got a towel or something in that bag.” 

There was silence for a moment, then, “How’d you know I’m a legacy?”

He sighed, but no one ever asked him these questions. He was more than willing to answer. “Your bag is a hand-me-down. I suppose that VT are your initials, but the V is slightly newer than the T, meaning that someone else had the bag before you, but the Harrow Crest is at least as old as the T, so someone with your initials came to Harrow with that bag. Also, your tie pin is not the one they hand out for this generation of students, meaning you’ve had family come through here before. Most of the boys are legacies anyway. Harrow prides itself on ‘staying in the family.’” He rolled his eyes. “And if you were going to ask, I know you are here on scholarship, because it’s clear from your clothes that you cannot afford to be here any other way. Your trousers have been let down twice, and your jacket has a patch on the elbow and one near the bottom. Anyone with money would have just bought new, but you are saving money. There are no athletic scholarships for swimming, so you have to keep your grades up. I know it’s recent, because even if you _are_ stretching out your clothes to last as long as possible, they aren’t that old, and they’d have been properly expensive when you bought them. And they are clearly tailored to fit _you_ so you didn’t get them anywhere secondhand. So the money troubles started within the last two years, after you started here.”

The other boy just stared at him for a long moment, then held out a hand. “Victor Trevor,” he said, finally.

“Sherlock Holmes,” was the reply. Victor nodded, then unzipped his bag and pulled out a thick textbook and a thin notebook. Sherlock watched him for a moment, suspicious, waiting for _something_ to happen But nothing did, and he returned to his own research.

*****  
He sat with his back against a tree, a geometry textbook in front of him and a notebook on his lap. He hated these graphs. Who cared about sin and co-sin? And then there were the opposites of all of them and bloody tangents which as far as he was concerned should have never had anything to do with maths at all. 

Victor lay sprawled out on his back, watching the sky. “See? That one looks like Master Hellwin,” he said, pointing. 

Sherlock sighed. “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “It looks like a cloud. Don’t you have homework to do Trevor?”

Victor scoffed, pressed himself up on his elbows. “You work too hard Holmes,” he complained. “It’s a beautiful day, and we don’t get many of those. Use your imagination a bit. Look, that one looks like a kid fishing.”

Sherlock glanced up at the cloud Victor was pointing at. It did look a bit like a fat boy fishing. “No it doesn’t,” he said.

“You are absolutely no fun.” Victor was pouting a bit now. Sherlock couldn’t help the little smirk that twitched at his lips. “Ha!” The sound burst so suddenly from Victor’s lips that Sherlock jumped a little. The other boy pointed triumphantly at him. “There, you see? I knew you saw it. You little twat. You’ve been fucking with me the whole time, haven’t you?”

“Do you really need to swear so much?” asked Sherlock. “It doesn’t impress anyone.”

“No, but it shocks the professors and my parents. It’s good to keep in a habit of shocking people, Holmes. Keeps them on their toes.”

“Hey, Trev!” a few boys Sherlock didn’t know wandered up to them, clumping together in that way groups of boys do, Sherlock thought to make them seem more threatening. “We’re gonna play some footy, you in?”

Victor glanced at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes. “Sure,” said the older boy. Got a spot for Holmes?”

The others looked a bit unimpressed. Sherlock was two years younger than most of them, and he had a reputation for being a bit of a weirdo. And hadn’t someone said he was gay? But Victor was looking at them expectantly. “I guess,” said the leader. “Marcus is out sick. He’s keeper. Holmes can fill in for him.” He gave Sherlock a severe look. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“It’s not even a real _game_ of football,” grumbled Sherlock. To Victor, he added, “I never said I wanted to play.”

“No, but I’ve made an executive decision,” was the airy reply. “You work too hard and fencing doesn’t count as a proper sport anyway. You need to interact more with people. One game of footy Holmes, it won’t kill you.”

Sherlock heaved a sigh, but he got up to follow the other boys to the field anyway. “I can touch it with my hands, right?” he asked.

Victor raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised you’ve paid enough attention to sport to know that,” he said. “Yes, but only inside the box.” he gestured. “Beyond that, you’re feet only, like everyone else.” Sherlock pursed his lips and took his place in the goal area. 

“Don’t worry,” said another boy. “We won’t let anything get to you.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Trust me,” he sneered. “I’m far from worried.” 

The Moreton’s Boys were playing a scrimmage against the boys from Lyons.* Apparently, their rivalry went back ages. Sherlock didn’t really care, honestly. Luckily, he wasn’t expected to care. Still, he didn’t like the idea that he might be bad at this, and he had no desire to make a fool of himself. So even though he didn’t care about football or the rivalry between the two other houses, he did pay attention, tracking the ball, watching the other players, making note of individuals as they kicked and ran and shifted the ball away from their opponents.

He thought he was starting to understand this game, even if he was getting bored. The ball had mostly been down by the other goal, though no one had scored yet. There was a shout as one of the Lyons boys broke away from the pack, came hurtling down the field towards him. Trevor was behind him, but he was more of a swimmer than a runner, and that was hurting him now. Sherlock could tell that none of the offensive players on the Moreton’s side would be able to catch the Lyons boy. His own defenders fell into a pattern, the first charging toward the opposing player, the other falling back in a well practiced move to be the second line of defense if the other boy missed. 

_He’s going to pass_ thought Sherlock, and sure enough, the Lyons boy feinted a move to the left, then passed the ball, backwards and to the right. Sherlock’s defender had already lurched in the wrong direction. There was another Lyons boy that had been just outside a ‘dangerous’ range. They’d taken advantage of the fact that the defenders would be focused too much on the one with the ball and not paying attention to anyone else that might be around. Sherlock allowed himself a moment to roll his eyes, but he refocused quickly, watching the oncoming player’s hips. The torso was where to look, not the legs, he told himself. That’s where the tells would be. A Moreton’s boy tried to get the ball away from the other player, but he passed it back to the first player. _Shoot, left upper quadrant_ thought Sherlock. Everything felt like it was in slow motion--the Lyons boy trapping the ball, then sending it sailing, hard, toward the upper left of the goal. Sherlock was moving even as the other boy’s foot connected with the ball, and by the time it was at the corner of the goal, Sherlock had been ready for what felt like a long time. He easily nabbed the ball out of the air. For a moment, he was a bit at a loss of what to do, but Victor was waving frantically, so he threw the ball toward him, and just like that, it was heading back down the field again.

The Lyons boys were better offenders than the Moretons boys, but as it turned out, Sherlock was absolutely unstoppable in the goal. He blocked every shot they kicked his way. No one even came close to scoring. The two teams had gathered a little crowd, by the end of the game, though a lot of people had eyes only for Sherlock Holmes.

He looked entirely unflustered, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He made it look _easy_ , not taking any more steps than necessary yet always managing to block the ball and get rid of it quickly. He did throw it to the wrong team a few times, but as one first year boy whispered to another, it looked almost as if he’d done it on purpose, just to have someone shoot at him again.

This wasn’t far from the truth. Mostly, being in goal was boring. Sherlock found it rather easy to read the body language of the other players, and he’d spent a good fifteen minutes early on in the game with absolutely nothing to do but watch them--he had a good understanding of their tells. He knew which players were more likely to kick with their left foot and which with their right, he could tell from the angle of their hips which direction the ball would go. He knew when someone was going to fake a pass, when they were faking a drive, when they were _actually_ going to do either of those things. He didn’t know all the terminology, but he knew where the ball would be and when it would be there. And since he knew all that….stopping it was easy. He just had to be in place before the ball got there, and since none of these boys were professional players, they didn’t quite have the skills to change tactics mid-stride, and they couldn’t fake or hide their tells.

So sometimes, (four times, actually), he very much on purpose threw to the wrong team. He wanted something to do, and he wanted to see what would happen if he did the unexpected. The results didn’t change much.

He stopped the shots without any trouble. In the end, Moretons House won the game, 1 goal to none. 

“You’re fantastic,” said one of Victor’s friends. Belzy or Bonner or something. Sherlock didn’t bother catching his name. “You seriously never played before?”

“Didn’t see the point,” said Sherlock loftily. “Still don’t. It’s not all that difficult.”

“You’re joking,” said Belzy-Bonner in an incredulous tone. “Come on Holmes, you’ve got to keep playing now. You’re amazing.”

Sherlock looked doubtful, but Trevor game up grinning, threw a hand around Sherlock’s shoulders. “I knew you’d be great,” he said. “Come one mate, we’re going into London after we get cleaned up a bit. Come with us.”

He opened his mouth to refuse, but another of Victor’s friends grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to buy you a drink, Holmes.”  
“He ain’t old enough,” grumbled Lyons boy. He shook Sherlock’s hand though. “You’re good,” he said. “No one else blocks my shots.”

“You kick the ball the same way every time,” said Sherlock, unimpressed. “You even always kick it to the same _place_. The only thing you’ve got going for you is how hard you can kick the ball. But your shots aren’t that hard to block, if you aren’t an idiot.” The other boy’s face, already read with exertion, turned redder, and he stormed off, feeling insulted, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Belzy-Bonner laughed.

“That’s it Holmes. We’ll buy you dinner then, if you don’t want a pint. I think we could swing it so you could get one though.”

Victor looked hopeful. “Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” 

Sherlock sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come.”

“Excellent! We’ll meet you in the road then in an hour.” Victor walked Sherlock back to the House. “Admit it,” he said. “You had fun.”

“I….didn’t have an awful time,” he grudgingly said.

“Well, at least you had fun proving you’re clever,” teased Victor. “You’ve got a natural talent in goal though. You really should play again with us sometime.”

“Maybe,” he said. “It really isn’t hard though. Just reading people and physics.” 

Victor laughed. “That and you’re fearless,” he said. “You’ve got no self-preservation instincts at all Holmes. That shot you blocked from Grammer? It almost took off your head. He’s literally been the cause of about three broken collarbones.”

“That was the big oaf that thinks he’s amazing because no one can block him?” he asked, unimpressed. “Like I told him. He was obvious. The only reason he scores a lot is because he kicks so hard. But there’s no surprises there. It takes a lot of momentum off the ball if you know where it is going and meet it before it gets half way.”

Victor laughed again. “Still mate. Good one. I’ll see you in an hour, yeah?” He waved a little, then jogged across the street to Moretons. 

Sherlock allowed himself a little smile. Being included felt….amazing. He wanted to _fly_. For the first time, it felt almost like he could do it even without his wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This is in about the September of 1995 Sherlock was born in 1981, so in 1995, he’d be fourteen (Which tracks with him being thirteen at the start of last school year, since he’d have turned 14 in January. I might’ve screwed up the math, but I tried damn it.  
> *Apollo 13 came out that summer. I figured...boys would have gone to go see it. I couldn’t find a good chart showing what movies were popular in Britain during that summer, so...I went with an American chart instead. If anyone has a better movie, let me know.  
> *The genome sequencing thing did happen in July of 1995. ‘Haemophilus Influenzae Rd’ was the first genome to be fully sequenced and assembled in a lab.  
> *Moreton House and Lyons are two other of Harrow Houses that the boys room in. I don’t actually know if they have inter-house inter-murals, but sport and competition and sportsmanship are values that Harrow heavily encourages, so it would make a certain amount of sense for the boys of various houses to get together in fun little games now and again.
> 
> NOTE: At my last check, Harrow doesn’t actually have a swim team, and fencing isn’t one of the sports they offer. But you do have to take a sport--it’s required (Like I said, they stress sportsmanship there) and I felt Sherlock would want to do something as non-combative as possible, where he wouldn’t have to change in front of anyone. Also, in canon, he was a very good fencer. As for Victor’s swimming…..well. I needed a swimming angle. For plot reasons.


	7. The School Part Three: Gloria Scott

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Victor become better friends.  
> A breakthrough is made!  
> The winter holidays of Sherlock's second year at Harrow are...very interesting indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentioned violence, abusive and terrible behavior and thoughts, and bad science. 
> 
> Spoiler notes at end.

Mycroft’s samples were still giving Sherlock some difficulty. The DNA didn’t lie---they were definitely brothers and they were definitely Holmes’. But Mycroft’s samples were somehow different in a way Sherlock’s were not. Sherlock had figured out what was causing his own mutation, and Mycroft had a similar gene, but it was not in the same place, and it didn’t crop up in the same areas. The allele in question in Sherlock’s samples seemed to crop up (or aspects of it anyway) in clusters of alleles and genes that he knew were determining physical characteristics. The gene appeared in Mycroft’s samples too, but not in the same places, and not in the same ways. Sherlock ran his hand through increasingly tangled hair and sighed. He needed better samples. Mycroft, it would seem, was a mutant as well, if he wasn’t fully mistaken. But it wasn’t anything _physical_ , so there was no way to prove it. And Mycroft would never admit to being anything other than _homo sapien sapien._

Sherlock ran his tongue over his teeth. Victor would be here soon. The other boy was always popping in to see how Sherlock was ‘getting along,’ all alone in the lab. Victor Trevor had taken it upon himself to get Sherlock into the world of Harrow. Sherlock protested and complained, but secretly, he was rather thrilled by it. No one had ever taken an interest in him before, and it had been almost three months now, and Victor hadn’t _gone_ anywhere. He was just as keen on being Sherlock’s friend now as he had been in the beginning of the school year. It was almost winter holidays, and Victor had all but told Sherlock that he was expected to come to the Trevor manor house for at least part of the Christmas break. 

Sherlock had told Mycroft of Victor a few months ago. Mycroft had told Mummy (which was still a point of contention, because it meant that Sherlock received a flurry of letters and phone calls frantically reminding him not to get careless, which Sherlock resented), but had seemed pleased that Sherlock had made a friend. Still, Sherlock hadn’t spoken to his older brother since then. He supposed Mycroft was due a...chat. He couldn’t figure out just what Mycroft could _do_ , but he knew, he just _knew_ he was a mutant, so all he really had to do was confront him about it. If he was sneaky, and Mycroft didn’t see it coming, Sherlock might just get the confessions he needed. And finding out exactly what Mycroft’s mutation was might help him get closer to figuring out how it all worked. 

He rolled his shoulders, the tightness of the binding chafing a bit. His wings were growing again apparently. There’d have to be another trip to the tailor soon, to work on the binding. Make it more comfortable. 

Victor poked his head in the door. Sherlock smiled a little. Right on time. Victor was nothing if not predictable. “Hey Holmes,” he said, sidling into the lab. “How has this place not rotted your brains out already?” He made himself comfortable, stretching across two of the stools. 

“It’s a lab, Trevor,” replied Sherlock automatically. “It’s meant to stimulate brain activity, not diminish it.” 

The exchange was habit by this point, the words barely even thought about before being spoken. “You need something?”

 

“Nah. Just bored and I figured I’d save you from pulling a Dr Jekyll and drinking some odd potion.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I would never drink a potion that would turn me into a psycho killer, he replied. “I’m not doing….mad science in here you know.”

“No, just for fun science.” Victor grimaced. “You know that never ends well, right? I mean, really? Doing science ‘just to see what happens’ always ends up with someone getting exploded.”

“At least that would be interesting,” he pointed out with a sigh. “I’m getting nowhere on my project. I need more _data_.”

“You mean test subjects,” said Victor, dryly.

Sherlock shrugged. “Call it what you want,” he said. “I don’t need more than a hair or a spit sample. Nothing invasive. Come on. Help me out, Trevor.” 

“Nope,” he said, cheerfully. “Not a chance Holmes. Just put something in the classifieds or something. Leave it in a few papers and someone will get back to you.”

Sherlock stared at Victor for a long moment. “That’s brilliant. You think they’d do it? If I offered to buy them coffee or something? Or should I try not bribing them first?”

“Bribery is always the best policy,” said Victor. “You aren’t seriously going to do it?”

“It was your idea!”

“Yeah, and I was _kidding_! Holmes, your project is….ambitious, but no one wants to just give a random stranger bits of themselves for a secret project!”

“It’s not secret!” he protested. “It’s about DNA and markers and what makes each person so different!”

“Which is a bit daft, and when you get technical, doesn’t even make sense,” said Victor. “Come on Holmes. We’re all going out. Come with us, forget about this crap for the night. Winter hols start next week. We need a night before exams, and you’ve got plenty of time.”

Sherlock sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Only because I am not getting anywhere.”

Victor grinned. “Excellent. Come on then mate, we’re going on a pub crawl. You can’t miss it.”

“Did you miss the part where I’m not even fifteen yet?” asked Sherlock, raising his eyebrows. “I can’t go on a pub crawl.”

“No one’ll notice,” said Victor, waving a careless hand. “And if they do, we’ll just go one to the next place.”

Sherlock sighed again. “Why do I allow you to talk me into these things?” he muttered, collecting his things. 

Victor laughed. “I’m very persuasive, and you are secretly itching to go dark-side. Come on Holmes. Chin up. It’ll be fun.” 

It was the first time Victor dragged him out on a pub crawl. It wasn’t the last. And as it turned out, Victor was right. Most places didn’t seem to give a shit, not if he went in with a bunch of the Harrow boys. They were regulars, apparently. And when Sherlock was with them, he was part of the ‘crew.’ And no one even tried to card him. It was amazing. And he didn’t want it to end.

****  
He didn’t want to go home for Christmas. But on the other hand, he did need to talk to Mycroft. His recent discoveries in the lab definitely indicated his brother was lying to him. He didn’t have solid proof. For all he knew, that odd little gene, in different places on the helix for both he and his brother could be a family quirk. But Mycroft didn’t have to know that. All Sherlock had to do was tell him that he had proof, proof in Mycroft’s DNA that Mycroft was not as purely human as he liked to pretend. That somewhere, in his genetics, he was just as freakish as Sherlock.

Still. He’d have to deal with his parents. He didn’t want to do that. Not right now. Preferably not ever again actually, but...he supposed he’d have to get over that eventually. He closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against the wall near his window. He stared out across campus. He couldn’t see Moreton’s from here, but he could picture it. He wondered what Victor was doing. He stopped that vein of thought in its tracks. He flicked his wings back slightly, and closed the curtains. He wanted to _fly_. It was dangerous. Even flying at night. He’d almost been caught several times now. Safer to try at home.

***  
He sat across from Mycroft in the train carriage that would take them home. There was no need to pay for a cab to take him the whole way, their parents reasoned. Sherlock wondered, if Mycroft had gone to Harrow, would he have been allowed to take cabs for the holidays? The answer he came up with was ‘probably’ and it put him in a rather bad mood. 

“You’ve put on almost a stone since I saw you last,” Sherlock told his elder brother, a little sneer playing on his lips. “University treating you well then? I thought you were only supposed to gain weight your first year.” 

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “You’ve put on some weight too, little brother,” he said. “Some muscle too. How do you like being a keeper?” 

Sherlock scowled. “You’ve been spying,” he said. “There’s no way to have figured out what position I play. I haven’t been doing it long enough for there to be any markers.” 

“Wrong,” said Mycroft lightly. Mockingly. Sherlock wanted to strangle him. “I know you, remember? And it’s obvious to anyone that knows you that you’ve been playing football. You yourself just confirmed the position you play.”

Now Sherlock wanted to strangle himself. Stupid, giving it away like that. He should know that trick by now. “How?” demanded Sherlock. “How the hell could you tell what sport I’ve been playing for fun?” Fencing was what he’d signed up for, after all, that’s the only one Mycroft should know about.

“Like I said, I know you. I know what sports Harrow offers as recreational activities, as well as the required courses. I know that your...situation means that you cannot participate in anything that involves anything less than a full shirt, which rules out swimming and track, even if you’d be excellent at the latter. I also know you well enough that you’d never take up cricket or rugby. Too boring or too much chance of getting discovered respectively. You’re already fencing, so that isn’t something _new_. Essentially, the only thing left is football. It could be tennis but again, I think you’d find that boring after a bit. You are favoring your left hand a little, and I can see the bruise near your wrist. It isn’t from fencing, or your violin. It’s not a difficult conclusion to see that you are Keeping for a football team. You get to wear long shirts and you get to use your knowledge of people and body language to figure out where the ball is going to go. Minimal contact with other players, limiting the chances you’ll get caught out. Please Sherlock, if you are going to try and hide something, at least make it difficult.” 

“Shut up,” snapped Sherlock. “You think you know so much. Did you know this? You’re a mutant too.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you know that I have _proof?_ ”

“Excuse me?” Mycroft’s voice was chilling, dangerous. Sherlock didn’t care

“I have proof. It’s in your DNA, Mycroft. Just like it’s in mine.” His turn to look triumphant. “I found the gene. The one that’s causing mutations.” He didn’t bother to mention that really, the only places he’d found the gene were in his own and Mycroft’s samples. He didn’t know if it really was the reason behind mutations yet. He didn’t have a large enough sample. Mycroft didn’t have to know that, not yet. “I don’t know what you do. But I would guess it’s something technical.”  
He remembered how Mycroft had been almost preternaturally good at making whatever electronics he could find do exactly what he wanted. Even for a genius, he’d been too good at it. He could always get perfect toast out of a toaster when if anyone else tried, it either became just warmed up a bit or black. He could program the VCR on the first attempt. His torches and light bulbs never seemed to burn out.

Technically, his assumption that Mycroft was a mutant was just that. A guess. But he felt, deep down that it was true nonetheless. And Mycroft had let him think he was alone.

“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.” Oh. He had touched a nerve then. Mycroft never swore.

Sherlock pulled out the folder that had been tucked into his shoulder bag. His ‘proof.’ “These, he said, pulling out two photos of human skin cells, “are normal cells. Normal DNA. This one is from the book,” he pointed, “and this one is from one of my subjects.” Victor Trevor, actually. Hair pilfered from Victor’s hairbrush and a few flakes of skin from a month or so ago, with Victor’s permission. 

“These,” he continued, pulling out the second set of photos, “are mine.” He set them on his knees, next to the first piece of paper. “See there?” He had circled the spot in red on the second photo. “That’s the mutated set of chromosomes.” He slid the last set of photos from his folder. “This one is yours. I’ve circled the spot on it as well as my own.” He had all three balanced precariously on his knees, as he waited for Mycroft to take them. They sat close enough that Mycroft would be able to see fine without that, but Sherlock was fairly sure that his brother would want to look at them up close and personal. He was correct.

“It’s not in the same spot, but the...difference is the same nonetheless. I didn’t manipulated the photos,” he added, as Mycroft flipped between the papers again. “You are a freak too.” 

Mycroft’s lips tightened, and he glared over the photos at Sherlock. Sherlock’s heart leapt. He’d been _right_. Mycroft had as good as admitted it. His heart plummeted. He felt like someone was squeezing the breath out of him. Mycroft had been a mutant the entire time. He’d _known_. And he’d let Sherlock think he was the only one.

“How could you do that to me?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. “You let me be alone, you let them…” he sank back against the cushioned back of the seat, ignoring the pains that always accompanied crushing his wings once again, after binding them. “All this time, you could have said something. Anything.”

Mycroft sighed. “No,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t.” He handed the papers back to Sherlock, who took them numbly. “Well done, by the way. Impressive.” Sherlock stared at the papers now back in his hands blankly. 

“Why?” He hated how broken his voice sounded. How lost.

“I…” Mycroft seemed lost for words. That never happened. Sherlock wondered if he should gloat about it later. Probably not. “I thought that I could treat you better than them,” said Mycroft eventually. “That if you were treated alright by someone normal, someone that was also in your family, you might not...be so hurt.”

“You were a coward,” snarled Sherlock. Mycroft didn’t answer. “You thought that they’d treat you the same way they treat me. And you didn’t want to risk it. Risk being the bloody perfect son they always wanted.” He sat forward again. “What would they say, Mycroft, if they knew they had two freaks for children.”

“Likely nothing,” said Mycroft. “For one, they probably wouldn’t believe you, no matter what evidence you put before them. Especially father. And...it’s not obvious. My...mutation. It’s nothing like yours Sherlock. It’s subtle. And it will help me get ahead. They might even appreciate it. A son who controls technology. It’s useful.”

“And I’m just a freak of nature, is that right?”

“Yes,” said Mycroft, simply. “I’m sorry Sherlock, but yes. That’s how they see it.”

“And you,” said Sherlock quietly.

“Of course not,” replied Mycroft. 

Sherlock gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “You’re lying,” he said softly, and turned to face out the window. Mycroft sighed, but didn’t reply.

****  
He kept his head down during the winter holidays. Head down and wings under wraps, as much as he could. He did sneak away to fly a few times. He spent hours locked in his room with them unbound. He didn’t seek out Mycroft. He didn’t try to push the limits with his father. Mummy was...around. Sherlock didn’t see much of her. He didn’t think that his family cared very much. He did what he was expected to do. Ate meals with the family. Church on Sunday morning (though none of them were particularly religious at all, so he wasn’t sure why they even went, other than the fact that all their neighbors seemed to go). 

Christmas came and went. Mycroft got more gifts than Sherlock did. Apparently, he ‘needed’ more. He made an appearance at the Christmas party, and then fled to his room the moment that he felt he could leave without making his parents angry. He wished that he could just sleep until school started again.

Salvation came in the form of Victor Trevor, who called, and asked if Sherlock could come stay at his house for New Year’s, and then go with him to school the following week. It didn’t take much convincing, so long as Sherlock promised to keep the wings hidden. 

Victor was just as brilliant outside of school as he was in it. He called Sherlock by his name, not just ‘Holmes’ and insisted that Sherlock do the same for him. “We’re not in school Sherlock,” he said. “it’s fine to relax a bit sometimes.” 

Victor’s house was really a huge, sprawling estate, with three or four outbuildings that he was keen to help Sherlock explore. “Honestly,” he said, “We just moved here. Some...uncle or something died and left us the house. Mum insisted we move straightaway. She missed living in the country. Hated town. But. Anyway, we moved last winter, but I spent the spring at school, and most of the summer practicing swimming or at Cranston’s house.” Sherlock knew Elliot Cranston. He played defense on the Moreton’s club football team. He was quite good, which annoyed Sherlock. It meant less for him to do, when the defense was any good. He was alright, he supposed. For a sixteen year old boy, anyway.

Victor snorted at the look on Sherlock’s face. “Jealous?”

“You wish,” replied Sherlock. “Anyway. Why should I be jealous? I’m the one you invited.”

“Well,” Victor gave a little grimace. “I had a bit of an ulterior motive.”

Sherlock froze. It would happen now, wouldn’t it? The reveal that Victor never liked him at all, that this was all just a ruse. He’d been paid or something, to make Sherlock think that he liked him. Stupid. How could he have fallen for it? Victor couldn’t be _that_ good of an actor, could he?

“My dad’s been acting off ever since we came here. You are sort of...brilliant. And you do that thing, where you can tell what people are about just by looking. I thought….maybe you could do it again? To my dad.”

Sherlock relaxed. Victor wanted his _help_. He wasn’t using Sherlock, or pulling a prank. He wanted him to help. Sherlock could do that. He _relished_ the opportunity to do it.

“Of course,” he said. “Your dad seems...a decent bloke.” From what he could tell from the forty seconds or so he’d met Trevor senior. The man had welcomed him, then drifted away, vanishing up the stairs. “What been happening then?”

Victor grinned, and settled on his bed, gesturing for Sherlock to join him. He did, sitting crosslegged across from Victor, who began talking. “He was fine when we were in town. Then we got this letter, right? From that uncle or whoever that died. I never met the man. He might’ve been a cousin? Anyway. Whatever. We got this letter from some Hudson man, telling us that so and so had died, we have inherited his country house, blah blah blah. Mum’s ecstatic. She grew up in the country, you know. She’s wanted to come back basically since she left. But she had got married and all, so she was kinda stuck.” He shrugged. “Anyway. Sorry. Not important. She’s psyched, but dad got all...quiet. I thought it was ‘cause his brother or cousin or whoever died, but then I went back to school and basically forgot about it. But mum says he’s been acting stranger and stranger. And I’ve really noticed it this break. I wasn’t home a lot this summer, like I said, but I noticed it then. It’s worse now. He gets these weird messages. Letters. They don’t call or anything, they just send him letters. I’ve seen the name Hudson on them a few times. He never reads them anywhere but his office. He gets them, takes them in there, locks himself in and then he doesn’t come out all night. And he locks the door when he’s not in there. It’s weird right?”

Sherlock had his brow furrowed, as he listened. “Your dad’s a barrister, right?” he asked. He’d seen the degree in the sitting room. It had seemed a bit pretentious, having it there, displayed prominently for anyone who visited to see.

“Judge, actually,” said Victor. “Made it last year.”

Sherlock thought for a moment. “When?”

“I dunno. I was at school. Um. Before the winter hols. It was a good Christmas, I remember that, even if Dad was a bit jumpy. We’d just gotten news of...you know. Uncle whoever dying and leaving us the house, and on top of that, he’d gotten promoted. Mum reckoned that he was too British to have to deal with all that sort of conflicting emotion and that’s why he got all weird.”

It wouldn’t explain why he stayed ‘weird’ though, thought Sherlock. 

“Anyway. Hudson’s coming for New Years. Dad said he’s an old friend of the family, but I’d never heard of him till he wrote to tell us about the house, and mum hadn’t either. And dad doesn’t seem all that chuffed. I think he’s a drinker or something.” 

That was interesting. A family ‘friend’ who tells the patriarch that a relative has died and left them a house. A _distant_ relative, even. One would think, that if you were going to bequeath a house and property like this particular estate to someone, the entire family would have met them. But Victor didn’t even know how he was related to the dead man. On top of that, the family friend that brings the news of the house keeps writing. Doesn’t come over often, doesn’t call. Just writes letters sometimes that Trevor senior has to hide away to read. And continue hiding after he’s read them. Something very intriguing was going on. 

“I’ll help you,” he told Victor. “And your dad.”

“My dad?”

“Someone’s threatening him,” said Sherlock. “Isn’t it obvious? Probably Hudson.” Which meant that Trevor senior had done something bad once. Something that would ruin his career as a barrister or a judge if it got out. If Hudson found out about Trevor’s promotion, he probably reached out then and there. Blackmail was the most likely scenario. Trevor moves into the country house both to appease his wife and Hudson, but Hudson has some sort of hold over Trevor senior still. Enough that he writes often and invites himself over for the holidays, even though no one else has ever really met him. “We just have to expose Hudson.” Without exposing Victor’s father, if possible. He might not know much about friendship, but he was fairly sure that ruining someone’s parent’s profession (and life, probably) would likely not help him keep that person as a friend.

“Jesus,” muttered Victor. “I thought it was just work stuff.” 

“I tend to be overdramatic sometimes,” said Sherlock, with a little shrug. “And I haven’t even talked to your father yet, so it might just be work stress. I tend to like things complicated.” He sighed. “it’s a fault.”

Victor grinned a little. “Alright then. Say it’s a threat. What then?”

“We find out why he is being threatened. We confront him, and then we figure out a plan to get rid of Hudson.” Easy. Well, probably not, but in theory, it would be simple. Reality though, was rarely so pretty.

***  
They waited two days before going to confront Mr Trevor. They explored the outbuildings (and nearly fell through rotted boards twice, once in a loft, which Sherlock thought was brilliant. Victor thought he was mad). They found a pregnant cat in one of the buildings, and, at Sherlock’s insistence, built a small nest around her to keep her warm.They also alerted the gardener to the cat’s location and plight. Victor wasn’t sure what the man could do about it, but Sherlock figured he could at least check on her when he was making his rounds. He was a groundskeeper too, after all. Which meant the things that happened in the outbuildings were sort of his responsibility. He got the man to agree to look after the cat by threatening to let Mr and Mrs Trevor know that though he’d known the buildings were unsafe, he hadn’t tried to prevent anyone from getting in. There’d been no locks, no caution tape, nothing. He showed off the impressive scrapes on his leg from falling through the floor in the upper story of one of the buildings, and the man had grumbled and scowled and agreed to Sherlock’s terms.

“Aren’t we trying to _catch_ a blackmailer?” Victor asked. “Why are you going about blackmailing someone?”

“I’m not going to actually tell,” pointed out Sherlock. “It’s harder to sneak into places once you’ve been actually banned from them, and your parents would definitely ban us from going inside those buildings until they’ve been fixed up. At which point they’ll be completely boring. And I wanted to make sure they cat would be alright, and he’s going to make double sure she is now. Even though we might not be able to.”

Victor laughed and shoved Sherlock’s arm lightly. “You softie.”

“I am not,” he protested.

“You are. All noble and trying to help out some stray cat.”

“It’s not noble,” he grunted. “I like animals, that’s all.” 

Victor just laughed again. “Protector of the small, Sherlock Holmes. Savior of cats and dilapidated buildings. Most people would, you know. Care more about Mr Lafayette than the cat.”

“Who’s Mr Lafayette?”

“The groundskeeper? God, you don’t even know his name?”

 

“It’s irrelevant,” replied Sherlock. “Why would I need to know it?”

“Damn, Holmes,” said Victor. “Should I be flattered that you know mine?”

“Sherlock,” he replied. “You said no last names here. And I don’t know if ‘flattered’ is the term. It’s easier to say ‘Victor’ than it is ‘Trevor.’ Your last name _is_ a first name you know,” he added. “It’s very annoying.”

Victor looked like he was going to pursue this particular line of questioning, so Sherlock distracted him by insisting they check out the abandoned greenhouse to see if they could find anything illicit. 

They didn’t.

***  
They approached the older Trevor in the sitting room after dinner, two days before New Year’s Eve. Sherlock had taken the time to really watch Mr Trevor, to figure out all he could about the man. He was absolutely positive that he’d been involved in something really dodgy in his younger days (uni, probably), and had tried to cover it up with money and being an attorney. He’d done his research on the man as best he could. Apparently, he had a reputation for being scrupulous. He was famous for his prosecution, for never bending the law to his own ends, for being unendingly just. If the law changed, so did he, following it to the letter. Most attorneys and judges seemed to have a bit of an agenda, Attorneys did what they could so their client would look to be in the right. Trevor didn’t do that. If his client was wrong about something, Trevor didn’t hide it. He didn’t brutally cross examine anyone, didn’t try to make a trial a show, he didn’t bully or threaten or try to get the witnesses to tell him what he wanted. He wasn’t a great attorney. But that scrupulousness had made him a very good judge. He was very good at impartiality, at logically following the law to the greatest degree as was possible. 

Sherlock was impressed. It also made him absolutely positive that he was compensating for something.

“How can I help you boys?” asked Mr Trevor.

“Who’s Gloria Scott?” asked Sherlock immediately. Oops. He hadn’t meant to start out with that. 

Mr Trevor paled. “What?”

“You have a tattoo scar,” said Sherlock, a little apologetically. G-S. There’s a drawing in the coatroom. The Gloria Scott. But it’s clearly not a professional drawing. And it’s signed VT. Victor is a terrible artist.”

“Hey!”

Sherlock ignored this outburst and continued, “While the drawing isn’t professional, it’s still very good, and it’s nicely inked. Victor wouldn’t have the patience for that. And he doesn’t like ships. He’d draw a race car or something, if he was going to draw a vessel.” Victor was glaring at him. Oh well. “So...I figure you drew it. But you don’t really like ships either. At least...not much. There’s nothing nautical anywhere else in the house. I looked. Usually, if someone goes to the trouble to frame something that they made, they like the subject. You’d find more than one picture of a ship. You’d find...fishing lures or a wheel, or a book on sailing or the history of clippers or pirates or something. Sea shells in a vase. But there’s nothing. Just one drawing of a ship that you look at every day when you leave the house, and which you see every night when you return. So. Who. Is. Gloria Scott?”

Victor Trevor Senior slumped in his chair a little. “She was…” he sighed. “You have to know that it was an accident. I liked her. She was funny, and charming, and beautiful.”

“Your ex?” asked Victor, a bit disgusted.

“No,” said his father. “No, we didn’t date. She wasn’t rich, and my father...your grandfather, cared a great deal about titles and lands and such. And I cared a great deal for what he thought. My cousin was living with us at the time, and he didn’t give a rat’s arse...excuse my language, what my father thought. We lived at home, though we were all at university at the time. Well. Eugene and I lived at my house. Gloria lived on campus. Eugene fancied himself completely in love with her. Probably partially because he knew that I liked her, and partially because he knew my father would never approve. So he pursued her. It might’ve ended up alright, except…” he swallowed. “Except one day he caught her uh.”

“With another man?” offered Victor.

“No.” Trevor senior seemed to be having a hard time getting the words out.

“With a woman?” asked Victor, keenly interested now.

“No. She….” Trevor sighed. “She ah. When she swam.” He swallowed. “She could breathe underwater. Through gills.”

Victor wrinkled his nose. “Ew.”

Sherlock glanced over at his friend. “She was a mutant,” he said, slowly. 

“Yes,” said Mr Trevor. “She...I don’t know. She didn’t have them usually! Just when she was underwater. But my cousin….he didn’t….he took offense. He was horrified, disgusted. Said she should have told him about her deformity, that she’d been seeing him under false pretenses.”

Mr Trevor looked down. “He was furious. Livid. And...well. Maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong. She’d pretended not to be a mutant. She’d never said anything in support of them. She avoided being near water generally. But they’d gone to a party together, and...someone, as a joke, threw her in the pool and...well. Everyone saw. Everyone called Eugene a mutant lover. Asked if he was a freak too. They didn’t leave him alone.” His eyes were begging now. “So. It was understandable, right? That he’d be angry?”

Sherlock looked at Victor again. He looked convinced. Sherlock turned back to Mr Trevor, his face impassive. “What did Eugene do?”

Victor’s father closed his eyes, looking very tired. “He invited her to the pool again. Said he didn’t care about what she could do. Said he was interested, that it was beautiful and that he wanted to witness it again, firsthand. I...it’s my fault. I wrote the letter. I sent it.” He opened his eyes. “I didn’t know what he was planning,” he said. “Really, I didn’t. She went. I think...I think she wanted to believe him. She wanted someone to...to love her for who she was. She wanted it so badly that she was willing to believe it when she was told it was true, no matter how obvious of a ruse it was.” He swallowed. “He killed her,” Trevor whispered. “He invited her into the water. And he kissed her. And he pressed his hands over those disgusting gills and he...he held her under. I didn’t know till later. But no one else knew that he’d been there that night. Everyone assumed that she’d taped them shut herself and drowned herself. She studied poetry. It would...make a sort of ironic sense. She’d had a flair for the dramatic. And she’d been horribly harassed for the past month. The university found out what she was and was going to kick her out. She’d been given the weekend to remove herself. And that’s when we sent the letter.”

“God dad,” said Victor. “That’s sick. You knew he wasn’t going to do anything _nice_ and you still let him go? What the hell’s wrong with you?” 

Sherlock felt a surge of hope swell up in him. Perhaps Victor was not so convinced by his father after all. 

“What about Hudson?” he asked. 

“Her step brother,” said Trevor, dully. “She’d told him where she was going. Or...he found the letter, I don’t know. He came to the house. Not this house. This house was Eugene’s. Too far away from the university, which was why he’d been staying with….Hudson came to our house, demanded that we come clean. His half sister didn’t deserve what she’d got, he said, and he’d make sure that we never forgot her. He wanted us both to go to prison. Eugene hadn’t meant to though. He only wanted to scare her. He really did. Just...make her feel what the rest of us do when we are underwater.”

Sherlock didn’t believe that for a second. He doubted, deep down, that Mr Trevor believed it either. But he supposed it didn’t matter much. If it kept him sane, he supposed it was alright to pretend. “But Hudson didn’t believe us,” said Trevor. “Kept calling it murder. Even though she wasn’t human.”

“Mutants are humans,” said Victor. “Technically, anyway. Mutated humans, but they are still _humans_. Trevor senior tensed his jaw. 

“That’s the politically correct stance now. At the time, it was different. So we agreed to pay him off. We’d pay him off. I got….absolutely pissed one night. And decided to get her initials tattooed onto my finger so that...so that I’d be sure to never forget her. I couldn’t….once I started dating your mum, Vic, I couldn’t keep another woman’s initials so I...I got rid of them. But I wanted to be sure I remembered. So I drew the picture.” He shook his head. “I didn’t hear from Hudson again until I made judge. Apparently, he’d been getting money from Eugene quite a lot, until he died. He never stopped asking him. But then Eugene died, and with him, Hudson’s main source of income, and so. I...He read about me in the paper. And he hasn’t stopped writing since.” 

Sherlock pressed his hands together, lifted them so they rested just under his chin. “So. Basically, you were an accomplice to murder when you were at university, and the man who is blackmailing you is the step-brother of the girl you allowed be killed.”

Victor glared at Sherlock. “Jesus, I thought you were listening,” he snapped. “It wasn’t his fault. It was Eugene’s.” 

Sherlock closed his eyes to avoid rolling them. “Fine. That’s what Hudson believes anyway. So we have to get something on Hudson. Or at least, get something that will make him look bad.” His eyes open. “That’s going to be on you sir,” he told the judge. “You will probably have to lie. You’ll have to come clean about Gloria Scott. How she was your university girlfriend. People will remember she hung around you anyway, if anyone looks into it. Which they probably won’t. You found out she was a mutant and you left her. Cold, perhaps, but forgivable. At least by most people.” Something that would be understood anyway. “Hudson sent you threatening notes. I hope you kept them. Threatening notes can mean a lot of things. You can prove he threatened you. You don’t have to prove when it started.” He dropped his hands. “You keep the rumor going that Gloria killed herself. That she did it for dramatic irony. That story is utterly ridiculous, by the way,” he added. “And it’s moronic that anyone believed it, but the fact is...they did. And people are still by and large morons. So they’ll believe it again. It’s tragic that she died, but it wasn’t your fault. Yet Hudson keeps threatening you anyway. Blaming you. You tried to help him out. But he kept coming back. He kept capitalizing on his sister’s death. Making a mockery out of someone you wanted to mourn in peace. Hell, you can even use your father’s outdated beliefs on mutants and the middle class in general as your reasons for ditching her in the first place. People feel bad for you. They are disgusted by Hudson. And it doesn’t matter what he comes out and says, because you said it first. You’ll come out on top. So long as no one actually does any deep digging, but I doubt they will.”

Both Trevor’s were staring at him in disbelief. “What?”

“You came up with that...just now?”

He shrugged. “Well. Not really. I already knew that Gloria Scott was someone that you knew in your university days, that something terrible had happened to her and that you were involved, and that Hudson was blackmailing you about it. So the basic solution has been obvious for a few days. It’s just the details that I added in just now.”

“Damn Holmes,” muttered Victor. “Good job you’re on our side.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone gets killed kind of terribly. It's not graphic, and it's told as part of a story. But it happens. Suicide is blamed for her death.
> 
> Also, apparently Harrow does offer fencing as a sport? 
> 
> Anyway. Not super thrilled about this chapter. It keeps not being what I want. Though...surprise Gloria Scott? 
> 
> I was surprised. That just sort of happened. I don't love how it turned out, like I said. But it's been too long since I've posted anything. And it's not like I don't have this story mostly written anyway. It's just re-writes and adding on so I have no excuse really.
> 
> Sorry.  
> I love suggestions though. So if you catch any fuck ups, or if you have anything that you think I can improve upon, please let me know.
> 
> Also, if anyone wants me to post an interlude or two out of order--to get some John or Lestrade or someone in here before they show up chronologically, just let me know.
> 
> I think there's one more Harrow chapter left.


	8. The School Part Four: Never Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second half of the school year is fraught with complications.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long, but....long chapter?  
> As it is, I will be re-doing this one after I get the rest up, but...there was just so much. I didn't want to keep splitting things up, though I probably should have for this chapter.
> 
> There's homophobia, bad science, self-deprecation and probably a few more things that I am forgetting in this chapter. Suffice to say that some Not Good things occur.

“Alright, do him.” Victor nodded to a boy a few meters away from them who was shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to another. “He looks shifty.”

Sherlock looked the boy over over briefly. This had become a game between them in recent days. Victor would give him targets and he’d deduce them for the other boy’s amusement. It was a good a way as any to hone his skill he supposed. And at least Victor wasn’t telling him to shut up. That was nice.

Still he couldn’t just _do_ it on command That would set a bad precedent. “It’s _cold_ he complained. “Why are we still outside?” 

“Come on Holmes,” said Victor, nudging him with an elbow. “You’re the one that wanted to be better at this. Do him.” 

Sherlock heaved a sigh (have to keep up appearances), but launched into his deductions. “He’s from a wealthy family, obviously, a legacy almost certainly, he gained weight this break, he’s close to his family, which honestly explains the weight gain, and he’s currently gasping for a cigarette, since it’s bound to be his last for a while.” 

Victor raised his eyebrows. “How do you figure?” he asked. “Come on, you know you want to explain it.” 

Sherlock glanced over at Victor out of the corner of his eye. He was pretty sure it was more that Victor didn’t trust him. Still. He was a bit a show off. “He’s well dressed for one, that coat alone is worth easily a thousand quid. Also, there is the fact that he goes to Harrow so. That is probably an indicator in and of itself that he’s rich. And he’s got a Headmaster’s house pin on his lapel. You don’t get into the Headmaster’s house unless you are a legacy, usually for generations. Generally, anyway, I’m assuming he’s not an exception to the rule. So. Wealthy, legacy. He’s let his belt out a notch. You can see it from here where the original creases are.

“Anyway. He spent time that he might’ve usually spent doing other things sitting about and talking with his family. He has a family member in the military...likely they were home from wherever it is that people are fighting.”

“How do you know _that_ for Christsakes? And how do you know that he wasn’t eating to hide his bad feelings toward his family.”

“His haircut. He has a very military haircut and his shoes are bloody _polished_. He’s fourteen, He isn’t in the military himself and he wouldn’t cut his hair like that or polish his shoes unless he wanted to impress someone he cared about. Someone in the military. And I know that he has a good relationship with his family because I passed him in the payphone twenty minutes ago when I went to get us coffee. He was talking to his mother and the conversation was very friendly.”

“You heard….that’s _cheating_ complained Victor. 

“No it’s not!” he protested. “It’s called _listening_ Trevor. I didn’t know at the time you’d have me deduce him, it’s just something I happened to overhear.”

“Bloody cheating,” grumbled Victor. “Fine. I’ll let it go for the moment. What about the cigarette?”

“He keeps patting his pocket and glancing around nervously. Every 2.5 minutes he starts to bring his hands to his lips. He keeps licking them too. I give him another minute or so before he cracks completely. Term starts tomorrow, he won’t be allowed to smoke on Harrow property.”

“Not like that really stops anyone,” pointed out Victor. “The area behind the rugby field always has smokers.”

“They smoke marijuana though,” said Sherlock. “The cigarette smokers hang about near the football field or behind the pool. I’d have thought you of all people would know that.”

Victor shrugged. “I dunno. Don’t smoke, do I, except on pub crawls. No point in getting into trouble at school. I don’t pay attention to where people break the rules.”

“You should,” said Sherlock. “You never know when information like that might come in han--ha!” he broke off with a loud exclamation as the boy he’d been taking apart for Victor’s amusement finally dug into his coat pocket for his cigarette and his matchbook. “Told you.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Whatever, showoff. No guarantees you were right about anything else.” 

Sherlock glared at him. “If you don’t believe me, why do you even ask me to deduce in the first place?” he grumbled.

“It’s fun watching you go,” replied Victor, shoving at Sherlock lightly. “Come on, don’t be like that Sherlock.”

He glanced up quickly at the use of his first name. Over the break, when Sherlock had been at the Trevor Estate, they’d used first names rather easily, but they’d moved back into the Houses at Harrow yesterday afternoon and Victor had slid right back into last names again. The fact that he’d used Sherlock’s first name was telling. Victor was looking at him softly, offering him a small smile. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” His fingers touched Sherlock’s bicep, just above his elbow, and Sherlock forgot the cold for a moment. 

The touches had been coming more and more frequently, ever since his birthday almost two weeks ago,*, when Victor had kissed him. It had been wholly unexpected, and Sherlock hadn’t had the faintest idea what to do about it. Victor’s lips had pressed against his softly, then with slightly more pressure. He hadn’t responded, he’d been far too surprised, but Victor hadn’t seemed disappointed. He’d kissed Sherlock three more times, and Sherlock had allowed it each time. He hadn’t instigated any kisses of his own, but he didn’t think he minded Victor kissing him all that much.

It was almost nice, really. He had to wonder though, what would happen if Victor knew about his wings. They twinged uncomfortably every time Victor touched him (though he’d never kiss him in public, if there was any chance of anyone seeing). He wasn’t sure if they were just growing again, or if he was just reminded of how much they hurt when Victor touched him in kindness because he knew how Victor felt about mutants.

Well. He knew how Victor’s father felt about them, and Victor didn’t like to disappoint. Still. If it was Sherlock, someone he knew, someone he _liked,_ maybe his response would be different. 

He wasn’t really willing to risk it.

****

It became a regular thing, for Victor to suddenly point at someone and instruct Sherlock to ‘do him,’ which caused a few immature snickers from eavesdropping bystanders on occasion. Victor always rolled his eyes or stuck out his tongue or in some other way returned the favor by acting like a five year old. Sherlock usually ignored the entire process, set on deducing Victor’s chosen target.

It wasn’t hard, not on Harrow’s campus anyway. It was all who was worried about tests or family or girlfriends. He never deduced who was gay or who might be a mutant. It didn’t seem right, and since Victor was hiding being gay, and he was hiding being a mutant, it would feel hypocritical to point it out in anyone else. Still, he did take note of the boys he thought might be like him. There weren’t many, but he needed to find out if they’d be willing to part with a bit of hair at the very least. 

When they went into London on the weekends for pub crawls (which Sherlock only put up with for Victor’s sake--at least, that’s what he would say if anyone asked him) or shopping (which he _actually_ wouldn’t be lying if he said he hated it) it was harder to deduce. The people of London (or Russia, or America or Germany sometimes) were a lot more varied than the Harrow boys. It was amazing how easy it was to tell public school boys from literally anyone else in the world, and how _similar_ they were to each other. 

Sherlock took to slipping out to London during the week, to practice deducing strangers. Who was having an affair, who was stealing from work, who had a sick parent, a dog that their flat’s lease didn’t _technically_ allow. It wasn’t easy, and it was difficult not to have a way of checking. At school, Victor would either go up to their target and ask questions point blank, or sometimes he’d already know the answers, but in London it obviously didn’t work like that. So Sherlock practiced. Sometimes he did go up and ask. People, he learned, got very defensive very quickly, and often threatened to call the police. Or they told him to ‘piss right the fuck off and mind your goddamn business,’ which seemed to him a bit rude. 

Deducing people in London could take minutes, whereas at Harrow it was the work of seconds. Still, it never failed to make Victor smile, or whistle through his teeth, or run his hand through his hair and say, “it’s a fucking gift, Holmes. I mean, freaky as hell, but jeez. You gotta teach me that sometime.” Sherlock tried, though Victor wasn’t exactly an apt pupil at the art of deduction. Sherlock sometimes thought that he didn’t actually care that much.

“I mean it,” said Victor, quietly, one day when they were alone. “It’s a gift, what you do.” He stood a bit too close, and Sherlock thought that if he wasn’t nervous someone might pop into the lab where Sherlock was technically supposed to be working on his project, he might be kissing Sherlock now. Victor liked to kiss him when he was sure they were alone. 

Still, when Victor ran his hand through Sherlock’s messy locks, Sherlock had to pull away. The feathers still grew at the nape of his neck, hidden by the curls. He tried to pluck them every morning, but he missed a few sometimes. He couldn’t risk Victor finding them. The look of hurt on Victor’s face bothered him though. Sherlock just swallowed and looked away. He didn’t apologize. Technically he hadn’t done anything wrong. He shouldn’t feel guilty. But he moved in to kiss Victor anyway; a silent apology. He never initiated it when they kissed, but he didn’t like disappointing Victor. Maybe, he thought, it would soon be time to let Victor in on his little secret. Maybe the other boy wouldn’t care, if it was _him_. Right. He couldn’t really even convince himself about that. His secret would remain just that for a little longer. 

***  
Sherlock asked Anders the tailor if he had anything that had any of his son’s DNA. Or any of his own. The man didn’t have anything of his son, nothing that would still actually hold up to experimentation, but he allowed Sherlock to take samples from his own hair and saliva. It was more than Sherlock was expecting, but at least he finally, _finally_ was able to expand his subject pool. Anders also gave Sherlock an idea, quite by accident. “You could just send in your measurements and payments to my PO box,**” he said. “It must get exhausting to sneak down here as often as you do. Someone must be asking questions by now. You don’t need _that_ many suits.”

Sherlock had stilled, quite suddenly. “Oh, _yes_ ” he breathed. “Brilliant.”

“I...thank you,” began the confused tailor.

“Not you,” said Sherlock, a little shortly. “Your idea won’t work. I can’t do the measurements myself, and half the time I have to explain to you exactly what I want changed with the binding. I am brilliant. I’ll be back next month. In person.”  
He swept out of the store, feeling a little badly, but mostly, eager. He went straight to the tube station, to make his way to the nearest Royal Mail Post Office*** to set up a PO box for himself. It didn’t take long. All he really had to do was lie about his age and pay in advance. He’d definitely have to be careful about his money though. Mycroft would wonder where the money was going sooner or later. And if he had to keep asking for money to afford the PO box as well as multiple trips a semester to the tailor, things would add up fast. Mycroft would notice, even if his parents wouldn’t care. Sherlock wanted to keep Mycroft’s nose out of it.

He settled himself at a small cafe not far from the Post Office, and started writing.

_Attention; I am seeking answers to what is often referred to as the ‘mutant problem.’ My ultimate goal is to determine what causes some people to be a ‘mutant’ and others be be ‘normal.’ I have no data, and I mean to rectify that. If you are a mutant, or believe you might be one, send a response to the PO box listed below, and we can discuss further action and payment. Also accepting non-mutant responses. This will remain entirely private.--AD_

‘AD’ was the name he had decided to do all of his mutant research under, in hopes of keeping eyes off of himself. ‘Arthur Doyle’ would soon be an established doctor, renowned for his work on genetics. At the moment though, Sherlock was satisfied with simply having a pseudonym to hide the fact that he was not even of age. The offer of potential payment, he thought was a stroke of brilliance. People wouldn’t generally just write to a random PO box out of curiosity. Well. Some people would. He would, but that was beside the point. 

This way, he could start private dialogues with people who would never ordinarily agree to be part of any sort of study. When they wrote him back, he could explain in greater detail what he wanted from them. He could expand his data pool and see if he and Mycroft were just anomalies, or if the odd little gene he’d found in both of them was actually the mutant-causing gene. 

And a double blind test would ensure that he never made assumptions about any of his subjects. He wouldn’t theorize about what sort of mutations they might have (or not have). And he would have the information he craved. It was brilliant, if he did say so himself. He was absolutely certain that by this time next week, he’d be rolling in more DNA samples than he could count.

He made copies of his ad, and returned to the post office, and sent off the copies, along with a few pounds, to every newspaper that the post office had an address for on file. He was almost whistling, on the cab ride back to Harrow.

****  
His good mood didn’t last long. One week turned to two, turned to a month later, and no one had responded to his ad. He sent out a few more, adjusting the wording, promising more money, and nothing. Perhaps it hadn’t been as clever as he thought. Maybe he needed to be even more vague, just say that there was an opportunity to make money, that it was quick and legal and private, and then leave the PO box number and just leave it at that. He might at least get a response or two then. 

“Sherlock!” He jumped, both at the volume at the sudden voice, and at the use of his first name. Victor laughed at him. “You almost fell out of your seat Holmes,” he said, when he finally got his breath back. “Jesus, you were really spacing out. If you’d glared any harder, I think the wall might’ve caught fire.” 

“What do you want?” he asked, glowering a little, mostly out of embarrassment.

“You promised to come to my meet,” said Victor, raising an eyebrow. “I’m holding you to that promise. Even if I literally have to drag you.”

Ah. Victor was dressed in his comfortable sweats, his pool bag slung over one shoulder, shoes on sockless feet. Sherlock thought that was pretty disgusting actually, but he and Victor had already had that particular conversation, and he was pretty sure no one had won the….well. Not argument exactly. Discussion, perhaps. He tried to think about a potential excuse, but he didn’t have one. He was very clearly not doing anything of importance at the moment, and Victor had been nagging him to come to a swim meet for months. 

“Fine,” he grumbled, grabbing his bag. “I’m coming. No physical force necessary.” 

***  
Victor Trevor in the water was a thing of beauty. Sherlock was grudgingly accepting of that. He hadn’t really considered Victor’s body before (a fact which Victor would probably be disappointed by) but now, seeing him, all clean lines and taut muscle, knifing through the water, Sherlock could definitely see the appeal. There was no wasted movement, no loss of focus. Perhaps he should have come to see Victor swim before. It was oddly hypnotizing. Relaxing, in a way, even though he knew that Victor was likely tired. Sherlock found himself counting strokes, counting seconds, and was oddly pleased to find how _consistant_ Victor was. It was smooth, it was efficient. It was beautiful. 

He probably wouldn’t tell Victor that though. Or perhaps he would. He didn’t compliment Victor enough, apparently. Though if he did mention it, Victor would probably just make him come to more swimming events, and even though Sherlock found that he didn’t mind as much as he thought he would, he didn’t really want to subject himself to more of this. Not everyone was as nice to watch as Victor.

It was the butterfly event that Victor truly wanted to win, and the one that he really wanted Sherlock to watch. He hadn’t said that explicitly, but Sherlock rarely needed anyone to say _anything_ explicitly, especially when he knew them as well as he knew Victor. 

Butterfly was a bit odd looking, Sherlock thought. They all looked like they were just thrashing around in the water. It wasn’t as efficient as the front stroke they’d done earlier, and he could see uses for the backstroke as well. This...was just flashy. He supposed that’s why Victor liked it. He wasn’t winning either. That would frustrate him. The boy in the lane two over from Victor was at least a stroke ahead. But he was flagging. Sherlock frowned, and glanced at his program. 

Carl Powers. He looked back at the water. Sherlock knew that name. Victor complained about him all the time. The only one that ever beat Victor. But watching him now, it didn’t seem likely. Sherlock had watched him swim twice already. Once in the first race, the I.M. and once in backstroke. He hadn’t swum against Victor yet, but Sherlock remembered the first time he’d done the butterfly, in the I.M. It had been crisp, clean, and smooth. He had made it look easy. Now though….he was struggling. Only half a lap in, and he was moving slowly now. Victor passed him, the others did too. Sherlock stood trying to see better, but suddenly everyone was standing, and in the water, Carl Powers was thrashing about like he was having a seizure. The little scoreboard lit up, showing that Victor Trevor of Harrow School had won...but no one was paying attention anymore. Three people were now pulling Carl Powers out of the water (and it seemed to Sherlock that it had taken just a hair too long for anyone to do something) and hoisting him up onto the concrete floor. He didn’t even remember deciding to do it, but he was suddenly moving, heading down the bleachers and ducking the swim coaches that tried to stop him to get a better look at Powers’ face. Someone was performing CPR, but it didn’t look like it was having much effect.

“I’ve called 999,” said a breathless voice from somewhere behind him. “They’re on the line, Ephram, talk to them…” Sherlock tuned her out, instead focusing on remembering everything he could. Powers’ pallor, the way his throat looked, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He wasn’t sure what was rubbing him wrong about this, but there was something….off. He looked up and met Victor’s gaze. Victor was staring at him like he’d never seen him before. Sherlock supposed he must have looked a bit mad; just staring at Powers’ body like that. He let the adults push him away this time and circled around to find Victor. 

“I didn’t want to win like this,” said the other boy, tonelessly. “I mean...he’s a dick, but I didn’t want him to get _hurt_.”

Sherlock didn’t know what to say to that. “Well. You didn’t do anything. Right?”

“What?” asked Victor, shocked. “What the fuck, Holmes? I...what would I do anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he said immediately. “I wasn’t accusing you. I was...it’s not your fault, is all I meant.” Though. Maybe someone _had_ done something. It was possible. If Powers really was a ‘dick’ in Victor’s words, perhaps someone else that was tired of losing to him had done something about it. He shook his head. No sense in making assumptions though. And what did it say about him, that his mind went straight to foul play? There was no evidence of it.

He forced his thoughts away from the morbid. “Go dry off,” he told Victor. “You aren’t helping anything by standing here dripping. They’ve called a stop to the meet anyway.” He watched Victor nod numbly, and slowly make his way to the changing rooms for his towel and his things. The inside of the pool lit up with swirling lights as the paramedics rushed in. 

They were too late.

***  
Victor was silent on the bus ride back to Harrow. They’d been told before they departed that Carl Powers was dead, that the meet would be postponed indefinitely. Everyone seemed to feel it was nothing more than a tragic accident, so Sherlock was forced to accept that. For the time being anyway. He just liked things to be more dramatic, more complicated than they actually were. He had no reason to suspect foul play he just...something felt wrong. But he didn’t know what it looked like normally when someone had a seizure in the water, or even someone who just drowned. Or had a seizure on dry land or….well. He had no data. Nothing to compare this situation to at all. It was infuriating. He glanced over at Victor, who had been quiet and withdrawn since they’d heard the news.

Sherlock rolled his shoulders. He hated sitting on public transportation like this. It was always uncomfortable, and he always had to sit up on the seat. He couldn’t lean back without causing more discomfort, and people always noticed how strangely he always ended up sitting on busses or trains. Cabs were better, more cushioned, but Victor had wanted to ride with the team. So they had. Still. His neck would hurt tomorrow. His eyes slid over to Victor. “Um. You are...alright, yes?” he asked. “It’s not like you were friends.”

“Damn Holmes, you are cold,” murmured Victor, after a long, tense moment. “I don’t...didn’t like him. He’s a...was a pretentious, arrogant... sanctimonious dick. But he was someone I knew. He was my age, and I _knew_ him...I knew him for years and now he’s never coming back. So. No. I’m not really ‘alright.’” He sighed. “Just forget it. Or...imagine it happening to Byron or someone. You don’t like him, he doesn’t like you...but if he died...you’d not like that.”

“I think I might be a bit conflicted,” said Sherlock. “But I don’t think I’d be that fussed.”

Victor finally looked over at Sherlock. “Don’t try that with me, Holmes. I remember how you were when your dog died. You aren’t as hard hearted as you like to make out.” 

Sherlock shrugged, and studied his nails intently. He didn’t want to think about Redbeard.  
Victor grabbed his hand, squeezed it once, just briefly, before dropping it again. “I’m glad you are here Holmes.” 

***  
It was a week later when Sherlock managed to get back into town. He was curious what had come of the Carl Powers incident. He figured it would still be relevant. A minor was dead, after all. That was always big news, especially if people assumed that the young person in question was ‘going places.’ In Powers’ case; he’d been prepping for the Olympic trials. Sherlock knew there’d be follow up stories. 

The case, as it were, he discovered, was considered closed. Carl’s botulism medicine had not worked. It was a tragic accident. So sad, to see one with such talent taken so soon. The papers were useless. Except one article from the Times which had produced a list of the things Carl had with him. Sherlock glanced through it idly the first time, but after a few more stories, he’d gone back to it. Something was definitely, definitely off about this list. “Missing,” he muttered. “Missing, missing missing….” it was right in front of his face, and he was missing something important. No. No, the list was missing something. Something obvious. He closed his eyes and thought for a long moment.

His eyes flew open as he remembered...yes. Yes, that was it. He found the second article, the silly, pandering one that thought it was a romance novel. “blah blah….translucent skin...somehow smaller...blah blah...light gone from the eyes...the fine bones of his feet…” There. He jabbed at the line. The author had gone a bit mad with the figurative language, but they’d also made a big deal about people ‘lovingly’ redressing Carl. But...bare feet. And the evidence list...it was missing something obvious alright. Shoes. 

Socks, jeans, sweatpants, a towel, two extra shirts, extra swim cap and goggles, medicine, book, walkman, CDs. No shoes. And that was what was odd. Of course he’d have had shoes. He was on the visiting team, they’d have had to come over from a hotel. No shoes anywhere. He still didn’t know why someone would want Carl Powers dead, but surely this was proof that this hadn’t been an accident. Where did his shoes go? Why would anyone take them? Except, possibly, as a souvenir. A token. He gathered up the newspapers. He had his evidence. Time to go to the police.

***

They didn’t care. Or believe him. He tried talking to several constables, three sergeants and a DI, and not one of them listened. He was too young, he didn’t know what he was talking about, he should let the police just do their jobs. Who gave a damn about some shoes anyway? They were still laughing at him when he left. Sherlock was furious and embarrassed and hurt. Well. Screw them anyway, if they couldn’t see what was in front of their faces just because they didn’t like who was giving them the information, then they were clearly morons. He didn’t have time for morons. The police would be _lucky_ to have him help them out. They’d have to beg.

He went to the newspapers next, but none of them were interested either. They didn’t want to follow up on the wild imaginings of a twelve year old. At least, that’s what the editor of ‘The Daily Mail’ said. Or rather, the editor’s assistant, because the editor couldn’t be arsed to even meet with Sherlock without an invitation. The only paper that seemed keen was The Sun. And that wasn’t even a proper paper. Just a tabloid. Still, he explained what he’d found to the ‘reporter.’ He didn’t give his name or his school, he just gave her the facts. He’d been at the meet, he’d watched Powers swim, how he’d known something was wrong, but by then it was too late. He explained about the newspapers and the evidence list, and the missing shoes, as well as how the police and the other papers had ignored him. “If this gets out,” he said, “and people believe it, or try to follow it up and prove that I am right...you might even get syndicated,” he told the young reporter. He gave her his PO box, told her to send him a copy of the paper once it ran. She grinned at him, and shook his hand. He could see visions of her byline dancing in her head already. 

It was a start, anyway. Now all he had to do was talk to Victor again. Maybe he’d know why someone would want to murder Carl Powers.

***  
“I’m not talking about this anymore,” snapped Victor. “Just leave it Holmes. He wasn’t murdered. He probably misplaced his shoes before he swam, or put them somewhere, and no one noticed. His medicine was fine. They didn’t find any evidence of tampering. It was just a fucking accident.”

“Yes, but _if_ -”

“There is no ‘if!’ He’s dead, it was no one’s fault. End of story. Just bloody leave it alone, for once in your life.” 

Sherlock glared at Victor, then turned and stomped out of his room. Why was everyone being so difficult about this? His being young shouldn’t matter, not when he was right. And Victor was always so impressed with his deductive abilities. _Not when it’s something he doesn’t want to hear,_ , thought Sherlock, furiously. He strode out towards the river. There were a few places here that were out of the way and private and quiet. And god, he needed to fly right now. It was dark enough that he could get away with it. _If he doesn’t want to know or think about it, then he shuts right down and acts like I’m the idiot._ He hated that. It was Victor that had insisted on practicing seeing what others missed. But now that he was using it for something other than Victor’s whims, Victor didn’t like it anymore. Sherlock sort of wanted to punch him in the face. Instead, he found himself a private alcove and stripped off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt before carefully undoing the bindings, and letting them drop to the ground and feeding his wings through the slits in his shirt. 

He stretched the wings, sighing in relief as cramped muscles finally got a chance to stretch. He couldn’t wait until he could live alone, let his wings free all the time, instead of having to keep them scrunched up under his clothes. He was afraid that one day, they might not stretch out, and he’d be left with crumpled, forever twinging extra limbs that couldn’t be removed, but never stopped hurting. Every time he stretched them out to their fully length it was a relief. One more careful look around, and he ran forward a bit, angling his wings, before flapping them a few times and launching himself into the air. Starting from the ground was always difficult, but he generally managed to do it on the first try, sometimes just using a tree or a wall to push off of a second time to gain momentum. And when he flew...he could just forget everything for a bit. The world fell away, and then it was just him and the sky and pure exhilaration. 

***********  
Sherlock was not looking forward to the impending summer vacation. Granted, Victor had promised that he could spend a portion of it at the Trevor Estate, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be expected to put up with his own family for at least part of the time. Mycroft was trying to be nice at least, to make up for lying to him, Sherlock thought, but he wasn’t quite ready to forgive his brother. Not until Mycroft gave him actual help, anyway. Mycroft could hold a grudge fairly well, but no one was better than Sherlock. The one thing he actually did better than his brother was stubbornness. As much as that was a talent at all. He decided to count it. He needed _something_ after all.

The days grew warmer and warmer, and Sherlock found himself dragged out of various labs or libraries (where no real work was getting done anyway) to spend afternoons outdoors, Victor liked to pull him into private corners and press his lips against Sherlock’s, fast, breathless kisses that left Sherlock slightly wrong-footed and Victor almost high with the sheer danger of it all. The older boy didn’t seem at all nervous about getting caught. Sherlock wondered if that was because he didn’t have anything _other_ than his….less than typical preferences to hide. Sherlock did. Actually, he sometimes wondered if Victor was only interested in him because he knew Sherlock was hiding _something_ and merely assumed it was the same thing that Victor himself was hiding. 

Still, he tried not to worry too much. Victor wasn’t really pushing for anything more than those hurried kisses. But he didn’t really like lying to Victor. He was certain that Victor would understand about the wings. Maybe at first, it would be a shock, but they were friends. More than that, really, because Victor trusted him in a way he didn’t trust the others. He certainly didn’t drag them off into dark corners to snog anyway. Sherlock would know about it. He was very good at telling when people had been snogging. Victor still made him practice his ‘deducing thing’ all the time. While it was a bit annoying, it was better than when Mycroft had done it. 

He told himself that was the case anyway, trying not to think about how when he’d been little, it had been a favorite game of his, ‘deducing with Mycroft.’ He was angry at his brother, didn’t want to think about him in a positive light. Though, to be fair, it was a little worse with Victor because the other boy couldn’t correct him like Mycroft could. Victor mostly just shook his head and grinned when Sherlock deconstructed someone, he didn’t offer advice or tell him what he’d missed. Which, while it made him feel like less of an idiot than Mycroft usually made him feel, didn’t help him improve much.

At the moment, though, he was more occupied with Victor’s lips on his throat. Victor was usually more careful about that sort of thing, afraid someone would come around the corner. But now, they were alone in Sherlock’s room, with the door closed. No one ever just barged into Sherlock’s room like they did Victor’s. To be fair, Victor had a lot more friends than Sherlock did. Most of Sherlock’s friends were really only Victor’s anyway, and they’d never just come visit him. It was as alone as they were going to get at school. 

It was closer to….anything real than they’d ever done. “Wait,” he breathed. “Just...hold on.” He took a step back, took a deep breath. “I...Victor, I need to tell you something.”

“What?” he asked, amusement coloring his tone. Sherlock could see he was a bit annoyed though. “What could possibly be so important now?”

 

“It’s not… _bad_ it’s just...not what...I’m not…”

“Not what?” asked Victor, his eyes narrowing. “You aren’t about to tell me you just let me kiss you over and over this year just ‘because’ are you? It’s not like you didn’t enjoy it.” 

Well. He had sort of just let him do it, but that was beside the point. “No! I mean..not really. But listen.” Well. Listening wasn’t really happening, as coherent speech wasn’t really happening. “Just...promise it won’t matter?”

Victor looked a little uncertain. “Alright. Holmes. What the hell is going on?” 

Sherlock took a steadying breath and loosened his tie. Victor looked even more confused. He couldn’t watch as he disrobed slowly. He peeled off his shirt and dropped it on the ground before chancing a glance at Victor. The other boy was shaking his head in disbelief but he hadn’t looked away. Sherlock let the binding fall, the wings stretch out to either side of him.

There was a long moment of silence, then, Victor’s hoarse voice broke it. “You are joking right?” he asked. “This is a...a prank of some kind. You’re having me on?”

Sherlock felt something inside him crack a little at the look on Victor’s face. “No,” he whispered. “I...I can’t help it, Victor, it’s not...I didn’t choose this. You said it wouldn’t matter.”

“Right.” Victor’s voice was toneless. Empty. But his eyes...the absolute disgust there made  
Sherlock’s gut shrivel. “Of course not. I...have to go now, Holmes. I’ll...I’ll call you.”

He pushed past him and out of the room without looking at Sherlock. Or touching him. Sherlock watched the door click shut and sank slowly to his knees. He felt sick. How could he have thought that it might go well? That Victor might actually like him enough to see beyond the deformities on his back? He sat back, wings curling around himself, suddenly hardly able to breathe. Would he tell everyone? The administration knew of course, but no one else...god, what if Victor told? There were a thousand ways this could go wrong now, all because Sherlock was an idiot. He pulled his knees up to his chest, pressed his forehead against them and just tried to breathe. His wings formed a private little shelter as he fought to stop bloody panicking and just _think_.

He didn’t hear the door open softly, didn’t see Mike Stamford poke his head in, concerned after he saw Victor storming out of the room in a furious huff, looking like he was ready to hit someone (or maybe already had), didn’t see him freeze, taking in the sight of his youngest resident with the enormous dark appendages curled around his slight frame, didn’t see Stamford back slowly out of the room and close the door as quietly as he could. 

He jerked slightly when he heard the click of the door. He listened, but heard nothing. Maybe it just hadn’t closed the whole way when Victor had left. Sherlock couldn’t help the choked sob that escaped his throat. Maybe it was for the best that they were going home in a few days. It would give Victor time to come to grips with what he was.

***********

They say that when it rains, it pours. Or perhaps that was just the slogan of a certain brand of salt. Whichever, it was proving to be true. He was going home, Victor hated him, and someone had finally responded to his request for samples to study to learn more about mutated genes. He had no way to communicate with this...mystery person over the summer, and if they did end up sending an actual sample, he had no way to actually study it in any detail. It was horribly unfair. He did send a quick note, explaining his project in more detail, but informing them that he couldn’t be available for a bit, but he hoped they’d remain interested in his work. He also sent a note to Victor, apologizing again, and expressing his hope that they could remain friends, and possibly still spend some time together over the summer. Swallowing, he posted the letter to the Trevor estate, and slowly made his way to the waiting cab. The summer was looking bleaker by the minute.

****  
It was the longest summer of Sherlock’s life. There was no Readbeard, no Victor. There was not even Mycroft, as his elder brother had elected to stay in the city, and flat out refused to let Sherlock stay with him. Sherlock begged, pleaded, threatened, but Mycroft refused him every time. He didn’t have time to babysit his little brother, and his flat was crowded enough as it was already. Sherlock figured he must be living with someone and didn’t want anyone to know. Either that, or perhaps Mycroft was actually every bit as good at holding a grudge as Sherlock was, and it was spite that inspired him to push Sherlock away. In the end, it didn’t matter. Mummy was ill, and father stayed at the house the entire summer. Which meant that on top of everything else, there was no flying.

It seemed that every time Sherlock tried to release his wings, to alleviate the pressure, Siger Holmes was there, or calling him, or sending some hapless drone to fetch Sherlock for some inane task or other. Mycroft, apparently, had learned interference from the best.

**************  
There hadn’t been a single word from Victor all summer. Not in writing, not over the phone. Just...silence. It was unnerving. Agonizing. The thought of going back to school was almost worse than the idea of just staying home. Almost. Every time Sherlock saw his father, he felt that low burning rage that the man couldn’t just _let him be_ and he’d be keen to get far away as soon as possible all over again.

Still, it was more than two weeks back at Harrow before he saw Victor. He approached him warily, and Victor, with several of their friends from football, just gave him a brief nod before turning to the boy on his right and then hurrying away. Sherlock tried to follow him, but found himself blocked.

“Just back off Holmes,” said one. “He told us what happened.”

“What?” the blood had drained from his face, his voice barely a whisper.

“You really freaked him out. And us. I mean...god, Holmes. How psycho do you have to be to just try and kiss him like that? He trusted you.”

‘What kind of person gets someone alone and just…” the second boy shook his head, displeasure evident in his expression. Sherlock mostly felt stunned. “Keep away from us, alright? We don’t care if you are a fag, but keep it to yourself. And stay away from Trevor. He doesn’t want anything to do with you.” 

Sherlock felt a bit lost. Victor hadn’t mentioned the wings. He just told everyone that Sherlock had tried to force himself on him. He felt a rather hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. Victor had found the one thing that was worse to these boys than mutation. Couldn’t he just...have let things be? He wondered if Victor knew just how much worse he’d made it by telling his friends such a lie. This wasn’t the sort of rumor that would go away, not this time.

“He kissed me,” he said, shock making his tongue loose. He shouldn’t have said anything. Because now he’d admitted there’d been a kiss. And with no proof….of course no one would believe that it had been Victor Trevor, golden boy, that had kissed the freak Sherlock Holmes. 

“Right.” It was the first boy again, not one whose name Sherlock had ever cared about. He hadn’t played on his team, after all. And as a goal keeper, people mostly shouted _his_ name, to get him to pass the ball, not the other way around. It was somehow worse to see that...level of disgust on someone’s face whose name he didn’t even know. It wasn’t a personal sort of hate, which at least he could understand. This was just a general distaste. For Sherlock himself, because he was just some kid who had dared try to kiss someone better.

They were still talking, hurtful words pouring out of their mouths, but Sherlock wasn’t listening anymore. He turned in a daze and moved away, feeling like the air was suddenly too thick to move in normally. His heart felt like ice. 

Never again, he told himself. Never again would he let someone in so deep that their loss would set him adrift in this way. Never again would he tell someone he didn’t want to chase away of his...affliction. Alone was better. Alone meant he wouldn’t be hurt. Alone would protect him. Forever.

 

 

*I don’t know what it was in 96, but this year anyway, Harrow’s spring semester will start on January 11, which is, in fact, almost 2 weeks exactly from January 6, which is Sherlock’s birthday. I am going to assume that things haven’t changed too drastically.

**If it’s not called a PO box in Britain, I am sorry  
***Again, if this isn’t what it’s called, I am sorry. Would it just be the Post Office? Or just the Royal Mail? It feels like awkward phrasing. This isn’t Brit-picked (obviously) and I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to British idioms and I have very little idea how the practical vernacular works over there. Any help is greatly appreciated.

((I remain though, a bigger idiot when it comes to science. So. Things are worse with that, even though I’ve tried to do some actual research, it hasn’t ended well))


	9. University Interlude: The Professor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude in which we meet someone who becomes very important to Sherlock and plays a role in shaping him!

University wasn’t precisely going the way Sherlock had envisioned. He’d dreamed of attending lectures in classes full of people as keen to understand as he was, who were like him...if not in _obvious_ ways, possibly in the more subtle things that had made him feel like an outcast his whole life. Well. People were smart. They were eager to learn. But very few of them seemed to have the trouble _connecting_ with people that he’d always had. They were good in class...and also knew when to bloody stop talking. Sherlock rarely understood why it was crueller to tell someone that their lover was cheating on them than to let it keep happening. And wasn’t it better to warn someone in advance that they showed signs of alcohol addiction? Best to nip it in the bud, surely? But no one else seemed to share these views.

He had found a home for himself in the Natural Sciences department, with a focus in Chemistry. Mostly, it was miserable. He liked to move at his own pace, to do his own projects. That wasn’t exactly smiled upon. You could do as you liked, if you really wanted, but only on your own time. Essays and labs were due at very specific times. He’d fallen asleep in class a few times because he’d already read ahead, and the professors were essentially reading straight from the book. The labs in year one were almost criminally easy. He was bored, he was in pain from the binders at all times, because it was increasingly hard to find a moment alone to release his wings, and he was lonely. And really, he might have dropped out part way through year two, if not for Doctor Bell. 

Sherlock got on stunningly well with Dr Bell. He had ever since the second lecture. Dr Bell had showed everyone a bottle and dipped his finger in it, before removing his hand, raising it to his mouth and licking. He’d passed it around to the class, and everyone had licked their finger and gagged on the foul tasting substance. Except for Sherlock. He met Dr Bell’s eyes squarely, dipped his index finger into the bottle, and then licked his middle finger, exactly as the professor had done. His eyes never left the older man’s face. Dr Bell had laughed, which surprised Sherlock a little, but that, apparently, had been the intent of the lecture. You can’t study behavior in people (past or present) without actually paying attention to what it is they are doing. Sherlock had waited until the professor had turned away before licking his index finger out of sheer curiosity. It really did taste horrible. He’d glanced up to see Dr Bell smirking at him a little. But though that little display hadn’t exactly won him the admiration of his classmates, it had made Dr Bell take a liking to him. 

He sometimes had lunch with the professor, if he was eating in his classroom instead of in the lunchroom with everyone else. Or he’d go to his office hours whenever he could. 

“So, Mr Holmes,” Dr Bell would say. “You see the groundskeeper Mr McCreedy every day. Tell me three things about him that you haven’t found out by rumor, or by asking him directly.” 

“He’s a drinker, divorced, and he’s got a dog. Though that one was recent.”

“Alright. How do you figure?”

“Well. Drinking is obvious. The blood vessels in his nose and cheeks are all shot to pieces. Also, his hands sometimes shake a bit, and he gets really cross if he hasn’t managed to find a second or two alone in a while. And I’ve smelled it on him once or twice. And I’ve seen the outline of his flask when he sits down.”

“Go on.”

“Right. Um. Divorced. He’s got a ring still. But he also always comes in with shaving cream behind his ear, or a spot or two that he’s missed. Or he’ll have one navy sock and one black. Sometimes there’s wrinkles in the back of his slacks or his sleeves. If he was living with someone, especially a woman, they’d never let him leave the house like that. So. Was married, now divorced. Maybe because of the drinking?”

Dr. Bell just raised his eyebrows, so Sherlock continued. “And the dog. He got bit. On the leg. He’s been limping since yesterday, and I saw the bite when he propped his foot up to tie his shoe.” He paused. “It took him two goes, his hands were shaking so bad, so I guess he hadn’t gotten his drink yet. And I needed to throw something in the bin right after he did, and I happened to see that the most recent thing dropped in was a receipt for dogfood. The really fancy kind.”

Dr. Bell seemed to be processing that. “You’ve done well,” he said. “You are certainly correct about the drinking and the divorce. Another way you can tell the state of a marriage is the wedding ring. It’s dirty. I know he’s got a bit of a dirty job on occasion, but his wedding ring hasn’t been cleaned in ages. From that, we can also….deduce that she left _him_. If he’d left her, he wouldn’t have kept the ring. He’d have wanted to be shot of it.”

“Because the one who leaves wants to be gone, and the one who is left tries to hang on?”

“Well. That’s one way of phrasing it. Things of sentimental value can have a curious hold on us, even if they are associated with bad memories. We do want to hold on to old loves, even ones that have gone sour. We want to remember the good memories. So we keep souvenirs.” 

“Who did you lose?” 

“I beg pardon?” asked Doctor Bell, a bit shocked.

“You keep saying ‘we.’ And you sound like you are speaking from experience, so. Who did you lose?”

There was a moment of silence, and then, “no one,” said Doctor Bell. “Humanity as a whole. We do things. For sentimental reasons.” 

Sherlock was pretty sure that the professor was lying to him, but he, for once, recognized a sore subject and didn’t push. 

“So,” he said. “Mr McCreedy. He kept the ring out of sentimentality, but can’t be arsed to wash it?”

Dr Bell chuckled. “He’s a man,” he replied. “A man that’s a bit down on his luck. He probably doesn’t have time to properly care for the ring. And I doubt he even remembers what it is meant to look like.”

“Why do you say he’s down on his luck?”

“Sorry?”

“You said he’s down on his luck. Why?”

“I suppose you don’t take much note of fashion?”  
Sherlock hesitated. “I...I try to take notice of everything. But sometimes there’s just so _much_. I know that I wear what looks good. I notice if people have lost or gained weight based on the fit of their clothes. I know what matches and what doesn’t. I can tell when something’s been patched.”

“Well. That’s all very good. Clothing is an excellent way to see where people have been. Now, unlike most of your professors,or even your classmates, Mr McCreedy doesn’t have his clothes tailored. Which means none of it will fit him perfectly anyway. And you haven’t had the time to get to know him properly, but five years ago, he was always very well put together. Then his wife left, and took his daughter. He used to be quite put together. His clothes weren’t designer or tailored obviously, but they were of good quality. Good cuts, good cloth, good durability. After Mrs McCreedy left, his clothes slowly became what you see today. Not as durable. They don’t fit well.”

“You mean they’ve clearly been fished out of the discount bin at Oxfam?”

“I wouldn’t have said it quite so rudely.” 

Sherlock shrugged. “Are you sure you should be telling me this? Isn’t it...I don’t know Improper to be telling a student all about his private life?”

“I wouldn’t say so. You already figured most of it out by yourself. I certainly didn’t find out about any of this by asking him.”

“But...wait. If he’s so poor, what’s he doing buying expensive dog food? Or even having a dog! They are expensive.” Apparently. He’d never had to pay for Redbeard, but cost was one reason his parents hadn’t gotten another dog. Not that he’d wanted some stupid replacement.

“Why indeed,” mused Dr Bell. “Go on to your next class, Mr Holmes. I know you are cutting your time close.”

They hadn’t come back to deducing Mr McCreedy. But three days later, rumors were flying about the school how headmaster Jules’ prize dog had been poisoned, and his house burgled. A week after that, Mr McCreedy was taken into custody on a tip from someone who wished to remain anonymous. Apparently, McCreedy had been on the verge of losing his job, due to the drinking. Headmaster Jules had been rather unkind (perhaps unnecessarily so), and rather lorded it over McCreedy (at least, that was his story, that the headmaster had gloated about the unfortunate turn his life had taken, said that his _dog_ ate better than McCreedy did, that McCreedy was worse than that bloody dog in every way) and that he’d just snapped, and decided that if there was anyone that deserved to be burgled, it was Jules. He’d originally tried on a day he knew the house to be empty, but the dog had bitten him, so he decided to get his revenge on the damn creature as well as Jules. He’d bought the proper dog food, laced it with poison, and when the dog expired in it’s sleep, he’d slipped into the house, stolen a few things of value, and left. He could pay his outstanding debts and leave, without anyone being the wiser.

Or he would have done, Dr Bell told Sherlock, “if the police hadn’t gotten a tip about McCreedy throwing away a receipt for dog food the very day the creature died. He hadn’t gotten rid of the bag. And he had rat poison in his cellar.”

“Were you keeping an eye on him?” asked Sherlock. “Is that why you wanted me to deduce him in particular?”

“I knew he was angry, I knew he was in danger of losing his house and his job. I knew he wasn’t the type to take it gracefully. So yes. I was watching him a bit. But you’ve possibly got better eyes than me,” he continued with a smile. “I wondered what you’d notice.”

“You didn’t tell them that I gave them the dog food tip?”

“Mr Holmes, I didn’t give them _my_ name. I’ve called in a few tips before, and I’ve never left my name. I don’t need the credit. I don’t need the money. It’s enough knowing I’ve done something good, that I helped get a dangerous person off the streets.” Sherlock had his doubts about that. You could get money for giving tips to the police? Perhaps it was time to try again. Maybe they’d listen to him now that he was older.

“So,” said Dr Bell, calling him to attention again. “What can you tell me about young Miss Kia Fischer?”

“Is this another potential criminal?” Kia sat two rows in front of him in Dr Bell’s class, and Sherlock hadn’t noticed any potential criminal activity there. Mostly he’d just noticed a vain girl with a borderline smoking problem, and who was a lot more prudish than her wardrobe would indicate.

“Not everyone you observe is going to be a criminal, Mr Holmes. “It’s still good to be aware of their habits. Miss Fischer,” he gestured for Sherlock to begin. 

Sherlock nodded, then opened his mouth and began to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh....sorry this took so long to get out and it is so short?
> 
> The actual story part of Sherlock's university time is taking for freaking ever. I know what I want to happen (though some of it has changed a bit now to be honest) but I've had such a bad case of writers block/the doldrums. I just...didn't feel like doing anything. I wanted to write the chapter, I just couldn't force myself to sit down and bloody write.
> 
> So apologies for that.  
> Also, sorry if my deductions suck. I'm sick, can I use that as my excuse?  
> Dr Joseph Bell--this is the man that the original Sherlock Holmes was based on. He was a brilliant man. If anyone recalls that scene in the TV show House where he walks into the waiting room and diagnoses each person by turn after just looking at them and asking ‘what are your symptoms’--that was something that Bell actually did. Bell also, it is believed did suss out the identity of Jack the Ripper. He assisted the police on several investigations with his physician friend Henry Littlejohn and helped to make the science of forensics what it is today. He could literally do the thing Sherlock does where he knows where people have travelled based on tattoos, if they drink based on their face (though that one is generally not hard to discern, to be honest), what their job is from looking at their hands.
> 
> The scene where the professor sticks his finger into the bottle and licks it before passing it around to the class to do the same, but he actually licked a second finger is actually something Bell did, to try and ensure people were actually paying attention and teach observation. In short, he was really, really cool.
> 
> And some of you may have noticed that I used a little bit from 'The Silver Blaze' (ie, the mysterious incident of the dog in nighttime--where the dog is poisoned so the jerky owner can get burgled. Though in that story, it was a horse and here it was just stuff).
> 
> Anyway. I promise that I haven't forgotten this story. And we will meet back up again with Sherlock in University soon. All sorts of things will happen. And yes, I do have it outlined (hell, I have the whole story outlined), it just seems to take forever for me to actually get it written out to a place where I am satisfied. Also, it tends to get away from me.  
> Originally? The stuff at Harrow was supposed to be one chapter. ONE! I might have a bit of a problem.  
> I'll try to keep the university stuff to one chapter. Though I guess technically, I've already shot that horse in the face.
> 
> And, final note:  
> I've decided Sherlock is at the University of Cambridge, in the college of Natural Sciences, studying Chem. There will be more notes about that in the next Chapter. I am doing my best to research it out, at least a bit, just like I did for Harrow. I will try to keep building/college names the same as much as I possibly can, and have my characters follow Cambridge rules as far as dress code (though from what I could find it seems like people wear normal clothes except during their first week and formal events), curfew, alcohol etc. 
> 
> Wow, I think my notes were as long as the story.  
> Anyway, thank you all so much for sticking with me.  
> And I will be honest--comments definitely get me writing. I think a guest left kudos earlier, but no lie, that's what spurred me to get another chapter out there. Just the knowledge that people are reading this and leaving some indication that they are enjoying it---or, almost better yet, giving me ways to improve it---will get me writing more, faster. Motivation you know. Anyway. Peace out, and see you in the next chapter.


	10. University Part One: The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is still searching for answers. Maybe his new 'friends' will be able to help.
> 
> Or maybe they are just idiots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this is really short and also...it took way too long to get up. I am sorry about that.
> 
> The chapter is dedicated to Kiwii. Honestly, the only reason that I wrote anything at all is because I got a comment. So...thanks! 
> 
> Tags in this for bad science and references to drugs.
> 
> EDIT:  
> Updated chapter titles. Chapter 9 is technically an interlude--not a full chapter, but involves a character that will be mentioned again, though possibly in much less detail.  
> This chapter didn't have a title (oops) but now it does, and I've elected to title it after the character that seems to be in it the most. Fairs fair, I suppose. Anyway. Hope this makes sense. And enjoy.

He lay stretched out on the bed, bare-chested, wings spread as wide as he could get them on either side of him, one limply resting on the floor, the other one climbing up the wall. It reached almost the whole way to the ceiling now. Binding them up was more painful than it ever had been, though on the plus side, it had been several years since they’d grown. Monsieur Anders, of the Anders and Sons tailor-shop hadn’t had to adjust the dimensions of the binder since Sherlock had been fifteen. It was perfect now, or at least, it was far easier to use than any of the incarnations he’d had to use at Harrow.

Sherlock yawned, watched the smoke drifting lazily upward from the cigarette, shifted his fingers where they rested on his chest, adjusting the trajectory of the smoke. He had only recently taken up smoking. It was oddly relaxing, especially when he was supposed to be working on a paper for his botany class. It was by far his easiest course, and he couldn’t say he cared about it at all, so the paper was not exactly a priority. He took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaling slowly, almost reveling in the burn of his throat and nose as he released the smoke. 

The knock on the door didn’t really startle him, though it did propel him into motion. Slipping into the binder (so much easier now, _thank you_ Monsieur Anders), and stubbing his cigarette against a small petri dish. “One moment Sebastian,” he called out. “I’ve got the notes for you.” 

Sebastian Wilkes gave a low chuckle through the door. “Swear to god Sherlock,” he said. “No idea how you do that.”

It wasn’t actually a difficult leap. Sebastian Wilkes had Professor Adrian Beck for his basic science requirement this year. Sherlock had her for his first year, and she always kept to the same routine in every single one of her classes. Beck gave a weekend lab every week, but every other week, she’d also have a much smaller, less group-oriented lab on Wednesday. Friday labs were terrible and difficult, and you had to get the main part of it done during the class itself. And then, of course, you still had to do the write up, which usually involved at least three multi-part questions. Wednesday labs were far easier. Easy enough that you could do them at home. Almost entirely theoretical. However, she’d given that lab last Wednesday. So this week would only be notes. The test would be coming up (every last class of the month, and there were only three classes left) so the detailed notes it was. Sherlock had kept his notes from her class, and when Sebastian had started asking questions, he’d just made them so that even a total plebian like Sebastian could understand them. Also, Seb paid him. And he was currently the only one who ever knocked on Sherlock’s door for any reason, after he’d scared off his nearest neighbors on day one. Well. One or two had taken about a week.

Seb though...Seb was studying Maths. He kept insisting that he could take more than one course of study and he was interested in science. More to the point, thought Sherlock, your _father_ wants you to be interested in science. Most people probably could take two courses of study if their first was maths. Seb was not one of them, though at least maths and chemistry were in the same college. With Sebastian though...Beck’s was probably the class was that would make him accept that he personally should focus only on mathematics. There were a lot of fields he could go into from there. Accounting. Stocks. Banking. He was good with the numbers bit, but nothing else. He knew that Sherlock _was_ good with the science though. And Sebastian was excellent at utilizing those around him. With Sherlock, he saw the possibility of a passing grade. In return, he tried to get him to come out more. Sebastian had been raised in a rather _quid pro quo_ household. His own conscience (what little there was of it) wouldn’t allow him to just take Sherlock’s help and offer nothing back. Sherlock found himself dragged to pubs and sport matches and parties. He hated every second of these forced excursions. Seb never noticed, and he never took no for an answer. Sherlock hated himself a bit, that he’d never quite figured out how to stop Superstorm Sebastian Wilkes. Memories of Victor Trevor always threatened to surface if he caught himself letting Seb too close. 

He brought Mycroft to the forefront of his brain, a memory of Sherlock sobbing in his room after Redbeard died, hardly able to breathe. Mycroft had loosed his shirt, let the wings out, and threaded his fingers through the feathers, massaging and straightening as he went. “You must stop this Sherlock,” he’d said. “You know Father can’t abide weakness like this. It was a dog, that’s all. All lives end. All hearts are broken. _Caring_ is not an advantage.” 

Sherlock had always wondered what Mycroft was doing then, by trying to comfort him, if caring wasn’t an advantage. His brother had left his room shortly thereafter, and Sherlock hadn’t let himself cry again, not loudly, not where anyone could see or hear. He thought he understood now. Mycroft did care, but saw it as a weakness. He’d indulged himself that one time, when Sherlock thought his world was ending, to prove that no, it wasn’t the end of things, that life would march on, no matter what had happened to Sherlock’s friend. A broken heart would heal, but it was better not to allow your heart to break in the first place. Even if you fix something that had broken, it was never quite as strong. It was a pity he didn’t understand this until after Victor Trevor. But his walls were stronger now. He wouldn’t let Sebastian WIlkes through them, no matter how charming he was. 

***  
Once decent, he opened the door and handed Sebastian the notes. “There you go,” he said. “Enjoy.” He moved to close the door, but the other boy laughed. 

“Come on then,” he protested. “You know I’m useless unless you explain it to me. Your notes are brilliant, but I’m hopeless at this shite.”

Sherlock glared at him. “It isn’t shite, it’s simple. You are just an idiot.”

Sebastian shrugged. “True enough,” he said mildly. Sherlock gave a little huff. It was impossible to insult Seb. Wilkes himself would probably say that he was just easy going, that it didn’t make sense to let every little thing rile him up, that he only bothered with the ‘big things’ not the ‘small stuff.’ But the reality was that he simply didn’t care. His ego wouldn’t let him. He thought of essentially everyone around him as the ‘small stuff.’ You could call him a pompous arse to his face and he’d shrug. Insult his mother in front of him and he’d just tell you it wasn’t on to insult someone’s mother. Nothing phased him, because everyone was beneath him. It was aggravating. It meant that Sherlock couldn’t get rid of him in any of the usual ways. He treated Sherlock’s deductions like they were a fascinating new type of fungus. Well. How Sherlock treated new fungi anyway. A bit intrigued, a little wary, but in the end, if it was useful, he didn’t care how distasteful something was, and he’d do everything he could to get the maximum use out of it. 

“Now,” said Sebastian settling down at Sherlock’s desk like he owned it. “Let’s start from the top, shall we?”

***  
Sherlock always had samples now. He’d published a paper last year, wherein he described the gene that seemed to cause mutations, the ‘M Gene,’ as it were. He’d presented photos (though not great photos) and detailed drawings, and research and all in all, it had been very well received. ‘C. Doyle’ was suddenly someone to look out for in the scientific community. He’d be called to defend it pretty soon, he knew that. He couldn’t do it in person, but there was no reason he couldn’t just keep publishing under an assumed name. He didn’t need accolades or Nobel prizes or anything. He didn’t care if someone else took his research and perfected it. He’d always been in this to just figure it out. To find out why this had happened to him. 

He also had managed to land an internship at St Barts. Last summer he’d shared a little flat with three other people closer to the hospital (it had not gone well, not for any of them) but since coming back to school he’d cut down his lab time to twice a week. It was only an hour away, Barts, so he usually just stayed the entire day when he went--he finished his internship hours (which were mostly boring; involving cleaning and filing and taking notes but not actually being allowed to _do_ anything), and then he was allowed lab time to do what he wanted. 

He was pretty sure that Mycroft or perhaps Dr Bell, his Evolution and Behavior professor had facilitated that particular job. He knew neither would ever admit it, and his own pride wouldn’t allow him to ask. But he was largely content. He had access to better materials than he’d ever had, his peers were idiots of course, but some of them genuinely wanted to learn. He’d seen Mike Stamford from time to time at Barts. Stamford always waved, and once or twice, when Sherlock wanted to use a lab, it was Mike Stamford who had signed out the space before he had, though he was never in there when Sherlock arrived. That had started after the second week, when the student (an actual medical student, to be fair, who had actual hours, apparently--not that Sherlock cared) before him had stayed overtime in the lab for twenty minutes, and when Sherlock had kicked up a fuss, it had been _Sherlock_ that had been escorted off the hospital property. But he’d been allowed back in on his next internship day, and after that...Mike Stamford always signed out the room in the time slot just before Sherlock’s. Sherlock sometimes doubted that he ever even used it. Yet another ‘thank you’ that he’d never actually give.  
***  
He was glaring at a slide. Useless. He hated this, being so….blocked.

“What are you doing?” the voice was quiet, almost timid. Sherlock jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone come into the room.

“Who the hell are you?” he snapped. The girl shifted slightly, shoved her hands into a too large lab coat. _Hand-me-down_ he thought. It was too big for the girl, though it looked far too narrow in the shoulders to have been a man’s coat. Mother’s, probably. 

“Molly. Um. Hooper. It’s my turn for the room.”

He glared at her, and she reddened slightly. 

“I mean. I did...I did sign it out.” 

“I signed it out for a two hour block,” he replied, shortly. “The room is mine until five.”

“It is five,” she told him. “Well. It’s five twenty-seven actually, but I really do need the space.” She shifted her weight again. Nervous. Why was she nervous? He took a step toward her and she licked her lips. Interesting. Her gaze darted to his mouth,then seemed to give him a once over before she looked him in the eye again. Her eyes were slightly dilated. She licked her lips again. Definitely interesting. She found him attractive. It had been a while since that had happened.

“I’m busy,” he said. “Come back later.”

“I can’t! I have to turn my labs in by eight! Look, um….Mr Holmes-”

“Sherlock,” he said. 

“What?”

“Sherlock. My name. I doubt I’m that much older than you, if I am at all.”

“You don’t have to be snide,” she said, and he was intrigued again. It was the first time she’d really shown any gumption at all in their conversation. “You only signed ‘S Holmes’ on the paper and your handwriting is terrible.”

“In any case,” he said, brushing over her objections, “I’m busy.”

“So? I have classwork. But we can both use the lab, if what you are doing is that important.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t think it was. “But I know you aren’t a medical student, so this isn’t schoolwork.”

Clever. That was….marginally clever. “Fine Megan,” he said. “But if you distract me--”

“Molly,” she corrected him. “And I can’t help it if I distract you. It isn’t my fault if you have focus problems.” She flushed. “I mean...that is to say, I’ll try not to, but sometimes I might need something...and you’ll notice and….not that there’s any reason for you to notice me.”

“Stop talking,” he said, feeling slightly faint. “Just….don’t talk. And I think we can work around the rest.” 

Still red-faced, the girl….Molly, apparently, nodded. And she remained mercifully quiet for the next two hours as they worked side by side.

She was there the next week too, and the next. She almost never said anything, but Sherlock found himself growing rather used to her presence anyway. He didn’t even mind.

***  
“What are you working on?”

It had been a while since she’d asked him. He sighed, and set the pipette down. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t talk to me?”

“I don’t think that’s what we agreed,” she responded, touching her hair clip to ensure her long brown hair was still firmly tied up on the back of her head. “I don’t think we agreed to anything at all.”

“You are _distracting_ me,” he complained.

“I doubt it. You’ve made absolutely no progress in at least two days. You’ve been staring at the same slide for ten minutes now. You’ve added more dye twice. There’s not enough sample left for you to see anything properly. You just want to look busy. So. What are you working on?”

He stared at her. He kept forgetting that Molly actually was….a bit more clever than most people their age. Or most people in general. 

“I’m...testing DNA,” he said. “For signs of and hopefully, the reasons for, any mutation a person might have.”

“What do you have there?” she asked.

“Saliva,” he said. “But it’s practically useless. Blood is much better.”

She hummed a little, unbothered by the callousness of the statement. Right. Medical student. And her mother had been a doctor. He’d figured that much out. She was probably quite used to talk of blood. “So whose do you have there?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s a double blind experiment.”

“Well that’s silly,” she said, bluntly. “How can you hope to repeat the results? You need to get more samples from the same people. And if you are looking at root cause, shouldn’t you also be looking at their parents? Genetics are weird, but you have to look back as much as you look at the present.”

“I know how the scientific process works,” he snapped at her. Her eyes widened slightly at his tone. “I’m not an idiot Maddy,” he sneered, feeling slightly triumphant as her eyes watered. He only messed up her name if he wanted to hurt her feelings. And he _did_ know. He just...hadn’t figured out a way to make it happen yet, and it was making him annoyed. It probably wasn’t fair to take it out on Molly, but he didn’t care at the moment. “I don’t need some random girl who is only trying to be a doctor because her Mummy wants her to be to carry on the tradition or some such nonsense telling me what to do with my own experiment!”

Molly squeaked, and fled the room. Sherlock felt pleased for a moment, then it faded, and he mostly just felt bad. But Molly didn’t come back. Women, he told himself firmly, were just too sensitive. It wasn’t his fault she’d reacted so badly. 

***  
He didn’t see Molly again for almost a month, in which time he made exactly zero progress on his M gene studies, and Sebastian Wilkes had forced him out on two pub crawls and a football game. He’d smoked nearly twice as many cigarettes in that time as usual, and he was a little nervous that he might be starting to get addicted.

“She’s dead.” He startled slightly. Molly had an uncanny ability to just pop up out of nowhere. He turned to face her. She was pale, and her eyes were slightly glassy, and she looked nervous to be speaking to him. But he was oddly relieved that she was here. He didn’t say that.

“Pardon?”

“My mum,” said Molly, quietly. “She’s dead. She died when I was eight. This was hers.” Her hands smoothed down the front of the lab coat. Sherlock opened his mouth to say that he’d known that, but Molly kept talking, not looking at him. “She was a doctor. Trauma surgeon mostly, but...but her sister was a paramedic. Twins.” Her breath caught slightly. “Aunt Agnes was...she was a good paramedic.” Molly said it like she was trying to convince herself. “But she...she wasn’t always sober. And.” She swallowed. “Mum would cover for her sometimes, if her schedule allowed it. Aunt Agnes lived across the way from us, and...sometimes she came over. Drunk. So Mum, if she could, if I...if I said I was alright for a few hours before Dad came in, she’d take Agnes’ shift.” It was Sherlock’s turn to shift uncomfortably. He didn’t really want to be hearing this, but Molly didn’t really show any signs of stopping. “It was supposed to be a routine call,” Molly’s voice was thin, almost a whisper. “Shots fired, gangs, you know. But everyone was gone. There was one gang member who was shot, and a bystander that had been caught in the crossfire. A store clerk had made the call. The police were on their way, it should have been _safe_.” Her voice broke, and Sherlock started to stand, but Molly forced herself to speak louder, and he sat again. “She was helping the civilian. But. But he wasn’t a civilian. At first, no one knew why he shot her. He wouldn’t say. It wasn’t till...till later. He was trying to appeal,” she spat out the word. “He said it was an accident. Like that makes it better. He didn’t want to be there in the first place, his job had been to…to try and make sure the other gang member didn’t make it out alive, but he...he got nervous when my mum found his gun. She turned to say something and he panicked. He wanted to shoot the member of the other gang but the safety wasn’t on and he….” Molly closed her eyes. “She shouldn’t have been there,” she said, in a stronger voice. “But she was brave. And she was smart. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with me doing something because I think it would have made her proud.” She turned her glinting eyes on Sherlock. “So you shouldn’t….you shouldn’t just assume. That because you are so clever you know everything. Because you don’t.”

“There’s always something,” he murmured, softly. “You were right,” he said, after a minute. It wasn’t an apology. But it was the best she’d get. “About my experiment. I need repeatable data. And multiple families to test it down a genetic line, I just...don’t know how to get it. People aren’t exactly...desperate to give a chemistry student DNA samples.”

She was quiet for a long moment, then she licked her lips and straightened her shoulders. “I think I can help.” 

***  
“What the hell did you do?” he asked in amazement. It was nearly a month later, and he had eighteen little vials of blood sitting in a chiller. Molly looked pleased.

“I told people that there was a new strain of chicken pox going around,” she said, “and that people with certain genomes were more in danger of it than others, and then I invented a chromosome pairing, and asked if people had it, and when they didn’t know, I encouraged them to come to the hospital to get some blood drawn just to see. I got them to test their kids too. All of the children were due for shots anyway.” She bit her lip. “It was a bit irresponsible,” she admitted, “using my office hours to...to sneak files and add tests like that, but no one will notice, because I’m the one that does the reports and practically no one reads them anyway.”

“You, Molly Hooper,” said Sherlock, with feeling, “are brilliant.” Also, he thought, it was a bit of a terrifying look into Britain’s healthcare system that a random resident and intern could just invent something like that and create tests for it. He made a mental note not to trust GPs, as a rule. Just in case.

***  
“You can’t just pay off a blood bank!” Mycroft was practically apoplectic. Sherlock stood before him, unapologetic. “The blood they take is not for you to do with as you please, people need it, Sherlock!”

“I didn’t take a lot! Just one box. There were only twelve vials in it. And only two of them were really what I needed anyway.”

Molly had given him the idea with her chicken-pox scheme. Blood samples really were the best. There was enough of it that you could run multiple tests on the same groups, and sometimes, family members would give blood together. It was perfect. Well. Not really. It was tedious. Perhaps he should have been more explicit with Molly about the types of mutations he was interested in, because so far, he hadn’t found a single drop of blood containing the M gene. 

He had paid one of the techs at a local blood donation venue to put aside just a few samples if people came in together, and he thought that one of them might be a mutant. He doubted that a mutant would just...give blood, just in case, but it was always possible. Either someone didn’t know, or they thought that their blood could only help, or they were bent on actually causing destruction--but there was no research on it at all--what mutant blood would do to a normal human. So far, his own tests of mixing his own blood with that of the normal samples he’d received had shown absolutely nothing, but it was possible that external and internal mutations did different things. The problem was, Mycroft wouldn’t give him anything, and he couldn’t _find_ other mutants who were willing to explain what it was their mutation did. 

Some of the samples that had been sent to his PO box had been mutated samples...but all that proved was the existence of the gene that caused the extreme mutations, not what each mutation specifically did. He needed mutants, and the parents of mutants, and he still couldn’t figure out how to make that happen. Mycroft still looked mutinous. 

“You got a man fired,” he snapped at his younger brother.

“So?” demanded Sherlock. “It’s hardly my fault if he wasn’t careful.” Though it was annoying. He’d have to find another source now. 

Mycroft sighed. “I won’t be able to help if you get kicked out of school,” he said. “And I know what’s in your room.” Sherlock froze. Mycroft smiled at him a little. “You think I’m an idiot? I know what Sebastian Wilkes and his cronies get up to on the weekends. Bill Maher was arrested last night, did you know that? Possession of a Class A substance.”

“How do you know?” muttered Sherlock, petulantly. 

“I have a friend,” was the lofty reply. Sherlock snorted. Mycroft didn’t do friends. He had someone that owed him a favor somehow. Possibly several favors. “The point,” said Mycroft, shortly, as if he knew what Sherlock was thinking (he probably had deduced it--annoying, when it was happening to him instead of the other way around), “is that if you get rid of it, properly--dump it down the loo, return it from whence it came, I don’t care, then I will give you what you want.”

Sherlock glanced up at Mycroft, his agitated fingers ceasing tapping out their frantic beat on the side of the desk. “What?”

Mycroft smiled. “Names. Addresses. Phone numbers. Not many, mind you, but I’ve heard good things about ‘C. Doyle’ from these people. And I think they’ll be able to help you. Do we have deal?”

Sherlock hesitated. “Who are they?”

“You probably won’t have heard of most of them,” replied Mycroft. He only knew of them himself because of his boss. But Mycroft already did most of his boss’ work for the man. It was only a matter of time before it was Mycroft pulling the strings, not some odious little man who simply passed everything along to his young assistant. “Though you might have heard of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters?”

Sherlock shrugged. It sounded familiar, though he didn’t know why. Bit of a pompus name really. 

“It’s a front,” said Mycroft, baldly. “There’s not a single person at the school who is not a mutant.” Sherlock’s head shot up.

“And I wasn’t allowed to go?” he demanded, outraged.

“You really think father would have allowed it?” Mycroft asked. “A school where you’d be encouraged to flaunt your mutation, where you’d learn to use it and control it? Where you’d be surrounded by people like yourself?”

“And yourself,” he said, seething. “I bet there’s other people there who can do what you do. I bet,” he continued, “that you just hacked the computers, and that’s how you found out anything about...about the school, or the other people whose names you’ll give me, or about Bill getting arrested.”

“It isn’t hacking,” said Mycroft, a bit primly. “I don’t hack.”

“No. You use your mutant brain to become part of the system and make it do what you want. Much more efficient.”

“Quite,” was the dry reply. “The point being, Sherlock, even if we’d known about the school when you went to Harrow, Father wouldn’t have allowed you to go to California to have your head filled with the idea that you are not a freak.”

Sherlock slumped slightly. His wings curled around his shoulders, a protective gesture. The only reason he’d agreed to this meeting at all was because he knew Mycroft wouldn’t mind if he took them out of their bindings, but at the moment, he was starting to wish that he hadn’t agreed at all. Sometimes it was nice to have them acknowledged, to know that there was someone, one person, just one, that knew about them, that didn’t mind, that was willing to be in the same room with them without being uncomfortable or looking at him like he was a monster. But Mycroft was right. Father would never have agreed to let him go somewhere that might allow him to feel like he belonged somewhere. Father was too pissed off at the world for giving him a mutant son, and he liked to take it out on Sherlock. It wasn’t fair, but since he didn’t know about Mycroft (something Sherlock would never, ever forgive his brother for, if they both lived to be a hundred), Sherlock got to be the freak of the family. The one who had to make up for his biology. If he felt okay about the wings….Father couldn’t make him miserable about them, which would defeat the purpose. 

“Fine,” he muttered. “You have a deal. I’ll get rid of it.”

“Good,” replied Mycroft. “Feel free to remain here for a bit. Help yourself to the pantry.” 

Sherlock watched his brother leave, and he sighed, absently combed his fingers through the feathers he could reach on his right wing. If this ‘Xavier’ had a school full of mutants, maybe this really would help him out anyway. More so than the cocaine Sebastian had ‘gifted’ him with a few months ago. 

The drugs were supposed to make him ‘more fun’ apparently. That sounded stupid to him. But he’d done some research, and discovered that it could also heighten your focus. It seemed worth it to try. And it had worked. In short periods, yes, but even if the high itself never lasted all that long (unfortunate, because he discovered that he did actually like that part), the whole world seemed brighter and slower at the same time. His brain moved lightning quick, and connections that would have taken hours could take mere minutes. The cocaine had started as a way to just shut Sebastian up, as well as a private experiment of his own, but it was slowly developing into what could only be described as a habit. It was _not_ an addiction, no matter what Mycroft implied. Getting rid of it wasn’t going to be a chore.  
If he had his answers, he didn’t need it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts:  
> The name Adrian Beck. I used that name as a pseudonym in another one of my Sherlock stories--Old Foes, New Allies. Also, I recently discovered that ‘Adrian’ was also the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s youngest son! Which I didn’t know at the time of writing the original story, or when I started this chapter. Spooky yeah? haha.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, the quote about caring not being an advantage is obviously shamelessly lifted from A Scandal in Bohemia. When Mycroft said it there, it didn't feel like something that he made up on the spot. I've made it a bit of a mantra. It's something he'll tell Sherlock whenever he feels that his brother is getting too close to something, to remind him that if he keeps throwing his heart away, it will be utterly bruised. It's better to be alone and strong.
> 
> And...hey, Molly's here! I don't know that I am satisfied with this really. I don't know if it makes sense. But I have always sort of wondered what happened in her life that she had no one but friends on Christmas. And she didn't mind going into work. Obviously, she doesn't have close family. I might explore it more.  
> Or just edit this a bit, eventually.  
> One more part, I think, in University. 
> 
> So yeah. Short chapter, updated because I got a comment. Is that sad? I sort of just banged this out, with very minimal editing. Sorry about that. I tend to get paranoid that no one is reading it if I am not getting comments. And I will admit to some writers block....and I really have no good excuses. Because I really do have fairly full outlines for the complete story (though I obviously have to adjust for inflation--this thing is already way longer than the outlines made me think it would be.
> 
> I really do live for comments. And critiques. The more I get, the more I will post.
> 
> Though I will be posting an interlude in the next week or so, about Sherlock's first time with the drugs. I was gonna put it here, but it didn't fit very well with the flow of the chapter, so it gets its own mini chapter soon.


	11. University Interlude: The Drug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a brief interlude of Sherlock's first experience with cocaine.
> 
> Warnings for probably inaccurate reactions to cocaine and some unnecessary homophobic comments.

Sherlock stared at the bag of powder as he stood over the toilet. He really did need to just….pour it in. It wasn’t as though he had _great_ memories involving the stuff. But still, it was slightly harder than he had anticipated to get rid of it.  
Finally, he closed his eyes, and dumped the bag into the bowl. He flushed without looking. It was probably for the best, he told himself, firmly. At least for now. There was no reason that this had to be _permanent_ right? Just so long as Mycroft gave him the information he needed and then he could….indulge as needed. Just when, for whatever reason, he couldn’t focus well enough on a particular problem. He didn’t _need_ it. He wasn’t an addict, he was a user. There was a difference. Even if, sometimes, he’d be hard pressed to explain what that difference was. 

He shook himself out of his thoughts. They were ridiculous anyway. In disdain, and a bit like he had something to prove, he poured the contents of the bag out into the toilet. He could almost hear Sebastian sneering at him as he did so.

“Come on Holmes. Don’t be so _boring_ for once.” 

He stared at the mess in the toilet, and flushed, firmly. He crushed the bag between his fingers, and he found himself sitting, a bit at a loss, against the wall of the bathroom, staring at the toilet where he’d flushed his one surefire escape. 

***  
Several months previously  
***  
“Now,” said Sebastian settling down at Sherlock’s desk like he owned it. “Let’s start from the top, shall we?”

Sherlock heaved a sigh. “The very top?” he asked, a little grudgingly. Sebastian had taken his only chair. He hated looming over the other boy as they studied. He preferred that they do this on the floor, if Seb had to stay at all. At least it was more equal. And it was easier to point out when Seb was missing things if they were both on the same level. Seb always complained if Sherlock leaned over his shoulder too often or too heavily. He never really cared when he was informed that it was his own damned fault. It was infuriating, and so far, Sherlock had no way of winning unless he _started_ with the study materials on the floor. Which only worked about half the time anyway.

“Assume I know nothing,” replied Seb, with a slightly smarmy grin. Oh, that grin would take him places, thought Sherlock, a trifle bitterly. “And explain it to me like I’m five. Not like you when you were five. Like a normal person at five.”

Sherlock tensed his jaw. “Right.” And he did explain, slowly, not very patiently, and with occasional digs at Sebastian’s intellect which the other boy took with surprising grace, for the next two hours.   
“You’d better go,” said Sherlock, a bit tightly. “If you want to be on time to your party tonight.”

“How’d you figure party and not pub crawl?” asked Seb. “And how d’you know I’m going out at all?”

“You always go out,” said Sherlock. “Tomorrow your class doesn’t start till late, so it hardly matters what time it is that you manage to stumble back to your room. And I think usually it _would_ be a pub crawl,” he continued, “but you’re wearing a cheap shirt. Not a bad one, of course, but you didn’t pay more than fifty quid for it.” Which, to be fair, wouldn’t be ‘cheap’ to most people, but certainly was for Sebastian Wilkes. “You always wear your more expensive clothes when you pub crawl, because you’re hoping to pull a stranger, or at least make sure people are looking at you. And sometimes because you can get free drinks out of the bartender if they think you’ll tip them well, which is always the hope if someone is wearing something clearly worth over a hundred pounds. But your shirt is cheap, and your trousers and shoes are nice, and your slacks are lightly colored. You aren’t expecting anything unsavory or dirty anything near them, which means you aren’t going to any of your preferred pubs. You know exactly where it is you are going, it’s an intimate sort of gathering, so you don’t need to impress anyone, hence the cheap shirt--if you are going to pull, it’s someone whom you know, so you don’t need to try as hard. You could just say that this is how you dress normally and you are going to have a lie in in your room, but you are wearing cologne, and it is good cologne, so you do plan on being in close contact with people. You wouldn’t care about your cologne in front of me, and you obviously took a shower before you got here, and added the cologne afterwards. Since obviously I wouldn’t care, and you wouldn’t bother if you were going home, you put it on for someone. So. Cologne, cheap shirt, light trousers, and habit all tell me that you have a party to go to this evening.” 

Seb snorted. “Well done. You’re coming.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, you’re coming. I don’t have cash on me to pay you right now, but I will do at the party. So you’ll come and get paid for this tutoring nonsense.”

“You can pay me tomorrow,” pointed out Sherlock. “Or next time, even. I’m not picky.”

“You’ll thank me,” replied Sebastian. “Come on, Sherlock. Come to the party, just for a bit. I’ll pay you, and if you hate it, you can leave.” 

Sherlock sighed. “Do we have to leave now?”

Seb grinned. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “And yeah. I’ve got to pick something up by my room first, and then we’ve gotta stop and get a bottle of Pinot.” 

Sherlock sighed again. This did not sound like his idea of a good time. But he dutifully lounged outside of Seb’s room as he waited for the other boy to grab whatever it was he needed and come back out, and followed (he did _not_ plod along, ta for that, Sebastian) Seb to the shop to pick up the Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio. Sherlock didn’t really like Italian whites, but he supposed he didn’t have to drink it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to anyway. He’d been a little surprised by the choice, honestly. Seb seemed like more of a red wine sort of person.

****  
Bill Maher answered the door, and grinned at the sight of Seb and Sherlock. “Oi!” he called back into the house. “Wilkes is here. He brought the good stuff!” Sherlock sneered a little at that. Ecco Domani wasn’t what he’d call the good stuff. It was only about twenty five quid, and that was only because Seb had bought a rather huge bottle.

But Mahar seemed fine with it, and he set the bottle on the little island next to the sink. Bill wasn’t actually a student. He lived near the campus, in a smallish flat that was part of a whole block of flats that had all once been part of a Victorian mansion. The outside of the place was far more impressive than the inside. 

Sherlock was largely unimpressed with both the decor and the company. There were only about fifteen people, which still made things a bit tight, but glancing around, he honestly couldn’t tell who Seb might be trying to pull. None of the girls really looked Seb’s type. That is to say, all of them had some pretty obvious flaws. None were actually hideous, but Seb tended to go for the better than reality, model type of girl. Sherlock was pretty sure he’d paid for some of them. These girls...were fine, he supposed, so far as girls went. But nothing spectacular. 

Seb disappeared with Bill and and two girls and a boy that Sherlock didn’t know into one of the back rooms, leaving him standing about uncomfortably with a roomful of people that he barely knew, or, in some cases, had never seen before in his life. He mentally deduced them, though he didn’t say anything.

_Too young to be here, but excellent with her make-up. Perhaps the older one helped her. She’s a good deal older than anyone else but apparently just as good at aging herself down as she is at aging other people up. Obvious really, the lips and cheeks are the same color. Why are they here? They don’t seem to know anyone…..later, later. Him next. Nervous. Why should he be...ah, he’s the one that brought the marijuana. I knew I smelled it. He needs to stop touching his pockets though, dead giveaway he’s got something in there.  
And…..that one just got laid. Girlfriend is the one with the brown hair, she’s being too touchy feely with him though. Showing ownership? I don’t think he likes her playing with his hair...yes, there he goes, hold her hand to stop her touching you, clever. He’s thinking of ending it. Probably wise. Why is it wise? Later. I’ll come back to it later….._

He shifted uncomfortably, knew that some of the others were uncomfortable too, with him just...standing there. He went over to the door that Seb had disappeared into earlier. It had been almost ten minutes, and he was tired of waiting. “Seb!” he called, knocking on the door. “The music is horrid and I’m done waiting.” 

The door opened and a rather annoyed face glared out at him. It was the one guy he hadn’t known. He squeezed his nose a little, sniffing. “What do you want, you poofter?” Sherlock sighed. He had no idea why this stranger had just decided that he was gay, but at the moment, he didn’t care enough to argue it. 

“Seb owes me some money. It’s the only reason I’m here.” He peered into the room around the self-appointed gatekeeper and blinked in surprise at what he saw.

“Sherlock!” grinned Seb from inside the room. “Come on Brady, let him in. Sherlock, come on. You’ll love this.”

‘This’ was, at least to Sherlock’s relatively untrained eye, approximately a whole kilo of cocaine. The little group was weighing it, bundling it, and occasionally, apparently, sampling it. 

“You’re dealing cocaine?” he asked, a little stunned. He’d have thought Seb would be a bit smarter than this. 

“Well. Sort of. This here is pure,” Seb pointed to a small container. “That is baking soda,” he pointed to a much larger pile of a nearly identical substance. “We mix it and sell it.” Seb paused. “Well. I don’t sell it. I just figure out who is a good customer. And we all get to sample from the good stuff, which is always a bonus.” 

Sherlock was unsure. This didn’t exactly look like a ‘bonus.’ It was highly illegal, but he didn’t really care about that. He didn’t even care about the fact that he or Seb or one of the others might get caught. In fact, he was certain it was only a matter of time. No one would be fooled by a mixture of mostly baking soda for long. Especially not someone who had ever done the drug properly. Though perhaps that was Seb’s job. Find suckers who wouldn’t know the difference and take their money. “Is this how you’ve been paying me for the tutoring?” he asked, after a moment. 

Seb shrugged. “Don’t tell me you got morals suddenly,” he said. “You were talking about trying to steal things from the morgue the other day.”

That was different. No one at the morgue needed those things anymore. They were dead. He didn’t say that though. He had a feeling it wouldn’t make much of a difference. 

“Come on Sherlock,” he said, edging a plate with two fine lines already prepared towards him. “You’ll like it. It makes your brain go faster.”

“My brain goes plenty fast already,” he said, coldly.  
“I know you miss things,” taunted Seb. “You always miss something. I bet that if you’d have had any of this, you’d not have missed something going on right under your nose.” 

Sherlock frowned. He doubted it.

“Come on, Sherlock,” wheedled Sebastian. “Don’t be so boring for once.”

Sherlock found himself on his knees. “I admit that I’m curious,” he told Seb. It wasn’t because Sebastian had called him boring. And he didn’t believe him either, about what it would do for his brain. But he was curious. And the scientist in him wouldn’t let him get away without an experiment. At least, that’s what he told himself. Just the once, just to see. 

This time it was Sebastian who coached him through something, carefully, taking an annoying glee in being as patronizing as he could. Sherlock wasn’t amused. And he didn’t really like the feeling of the powder going up his nose. It felt odd, like a reverse sneeze. And some of it felt caught in his throat, which….he wanted to cough. It almost felt like he was choking. Seb was, as he’d previously thought, an idiot. 

He made his way back into the main room. Well, at least now he knew, he reassured himself. It was stupid, it was….oh. How intriguing. He wondered if this was how Mycroft felt all the time. Detached. Above it all. Untouched. And he realized a few of the things he’d been missing before. The woman who was too old and the girl who was too young...they weren’t really friends of anyway. They’d been paid. Obvious, if he really looked at them, at how they were interacting with the others in the room. He wouldn’t doubt that before the night was over, someone did a line off one of their stomachs. That boy with the pot….he wasn’t selling, he was buying. And probably not marijuana. No one that reeked that badly of weed would be that nervous about having it in his possession. He was probably one of Sebastian’s suckers. Perhaps the pot had been an attempt to calm himself down before he did something far more illegal. Idiot. He doubted it would work at all properly. He knew speedballs were a thing, but he didn’t think coke worked with marijuana in the same way it did with heroin or benzos or whatever people used in speedballs.

“You’ve got herpes,” he told the girl who was now sucking a hickey on her boyfriends neck. “So it’s good he’s leaving you. He’s cheating too,” he added. “He had sex before he got here. But with a blonde. And she has better perfume.”

Both of them were looking at him in horror, but he didn’t care at all. This was almost as good as flying for real. He didn’t even care that it was uncomfortable in his throat and his nose. Surely there were ways around that. Imagine….he could use this in so many ways. His research….there were a few things he’d been missing, just a few, but if he could use _this_....he was energized, excited, in a way he hadn’t been in ages. He felt _rejuvenated_. This was….this was amazing. Seb had been right. That...he didn’t like that thought at all. It didn’t sit well. He imagined bundling up the thought, and once it was spun tightly in a spider-like thread, he tossed it down a deep pit. He couldn’t hear it hit the bottom.

When he opened his eyes, the boyfriend was yelling at him. “Seriously,” said Sherlock, “you should get tested. Her make-up only barely hides the cold sore. And she’s been adjusting her skirt for ages. She’s uncomfortable. And she’s probably gonna pass it on to you, if she hasn’t already.” He grinned loosely. He’d been thinking something….something about Seb….oh. Perhaps Seb would get him more of this, right. There’d been something else...he remembered tossing something down a hole, but not what he’d thought. Oh, that was handy. He’d experiment with that too, expunging unwanted data. The boyfriend was swinging….Sherlock ducked. Everything was so _slow_. It was sort of hilarious. 

Seb was beside him then, arm swung around his shoulders. “Sherlock, you are _soooo_ high,” he sang in Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock shoved at him, but Seb only tightened his grip. “Told you you’d like it,” he crooned. ‘It’s brilliant stuff, really. And I always get the good stuff.”

“He says I’m a cheater!” roared the boyfriend, angrily. “And that Katie has fucking herpes!”

“You are, and she is, and she does….” he paused. “Unless you’re the one that gave her the herpes and you got it from the blonde girl. But she was trying too hard. You were responding enough, but she was really trying. Guilty conscience, I think.” Impossible to tell for sure now, the girl had run off somewhere, but Sherlock didn’t give a shit where she’d gone. 

“Oh Sherlock,” sighed Seb. “You really don’t know when to quit do you? I’ll take you home.” 

Sherlock didn’t really remember much of the walk back to his room, his mind already racing ahead to the next problem. He was still going over his research mentally, when he felt things starting to slow down. He was back in his room, alone, door locked. At some point, he’d taken off his shirt and binder, his wings flapping in agitation every so often. Paper was strewn about the floor. There were three cigarettes floating in a cold cup of tea, and another was in his hand. Oops. He’d get in trouble for that. He wasn’t supposed to be smoking. He snorted at the ridiculousness of that thought. He was coming down from a class A drug and he was worried about the Dean being angry because of some cigarettes. Moronic. Still. It really was brilliant stuff, this cocaine. He’d have to talk to Seb about getting more. It was terribly exciting, planning just what he’d be able to do with this as a bit of a helping hand. He’d have to do some more research on it of course. He was a scientist, after all. He needed to know exactly what it was doing to his brain in order to figure out the optimal amount to take at any given time--as well as how to take it, and if he’d need anything else to temper it. There was a whole new science to be uncovered here. And it would help him in his other goal too. As far as Sherlock could see; this was definitely a ‘win-win.’ All he had to do now, was make sure he had constant access to the ‘good stuff.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Woot, interlude. I actually got this up within the week, aren't you so proud? 
> 
> Anyway, I am still planning on one more University chapter. Knowing me, it might spiral out of control (as in--Sherlock's time at Harrow was meant to be one chapter, and it somehow ballooned into six parts so. There's that).
> 
> Comments guilt me into writing more and posting faster. Just saying.  
> Also, critiques are excellent. Please tell me how to improve.


	12. University Part 3: The Result

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and mentor Dr Bell bond, as he delves deeper into his research.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAD SCIENCE AHEAD.  
> Seriously, please don't read this for any sort of accuracy in the science. I am pretty sure it's all bullshit.   
> Oops. 
> 
> Also, I am really sorry if this wasn't worth the wait. I've had some seriously terrible writers block, and then I've been in and out of town, and then I moved, and honestly, I am still super transition-y right now. So it's a short chapter (so sorry) and I made you wait for so freaking long....sorry?))

The names Mycroft had provided were interesting, but had yet to yield any results at all. It was infuriating. He’d started a dialogue with that Professor, but the man absolutely refused to give up any sort of samples. Sherlock decided that this summer, a trip to New York was in order. If Xavier wouldn’t help him from afar, he’d have to go to the man directly. Dr McCoy was a bit more useful. He was willing to send personal samples at least, though he couldn’t send anything from any relatives. Still, the blue hair was fascinating. As was the photo the doctor had sent. Sherlock had never really been relieved about his wings, but at least he could hide them. McCoy wouldn’t be able to hide his mutation at all. Perhaps that’s why he was being so helpful. He even sent Sherlock some copies of his own research from the sixties and seventies. Much of it, he found, he’d read before, or at least, he’d read articles _about_ the originals. They were a bit out of date but...he was grateful all the same. Perhaps McCoy would put in a good word with Xavier. 

He leaned away from the computer and sighed, running his fingers through his hair. Thank god for email, he thought, dryly. He’d had to set up an account just for this, but he was grateful for the ease that information could be shared. If he had to wait for actual letters from these men, he thought he’d tear his hair out.

“Sherlock.” He nearly jumped out of his seat, quickly logging out and exiting his email. 

“What?” he snapped, spinning to face Stamford. The man hadn’t actually tried to talk to him in ages. Sherlock was more or less okay with that really. He wasn’t sure what he’d say. If he should thank him, or ignore….everything Stamford had done for him or...well. He just had no idea. 

Stamford didn’t balk at Sherlock’s tone. He just raised his eyebrows. “I did sign out the lab after you,” he said. “Technically it’s my turn.”

“You’ve never used it before.”

“That’s not true. But in this instance, I do need the lab, and I _did_ sign it out. And I am the one that’s actually a medical student you know. But that’s not the only reason I am here.” He held out a folded piece of paper. “Someone wants to see you in the morgue.”

“Interesting phrasing,” said Sherlock, dryly. “Do they want to see me alive or dead in the morgue?”

“Ha ha,” was the equally bland reply. “You’re hysterical.”

“And you fancy yourself in love,” replied Sherlock, a bit meanly. “It will never last.”

Stamford raised his eyebrows. “Fine then,” he said. “Enlighten me. I know you’re dying to.” 

“Don’t end sentences with prepositions,” said Sherlock, “it makes you sound like an idiot. And it’s obvious. You’ve been taking _quite_ a bit more time with your morning ablutions. We work in the same hospital, Mike, I’ve seen how you usually look. Last few times I’ve seen you, you have been perfectly shaved and your hair has been _styled_ of all things. Not your usual style either, so someone else suggested it. The haircut doesn’t suit you,” he added. “It makes your face look too round. You haven’t been wearing your glasses, even though the contacts bother your eyes--even if I hadn’t seen you using saline solution on a few occasions, your eyes are a bit red and bothered, and you rub them rather a lot. You’ve done it twice so far since You have several new blazers, again, all in a _very_ different style than your own,” ie, more expensive. For all that Stamford came from old money, he was very frugal about how he spent his own--parents had obviously had some money troubles, though it was unnecessary to mention that now, “and they really aren’t your color, so even if you were trying to branch out, it is clear you weren’t the one that picked them out. New wardrobe, new hair, contacts instead of glasses...new romance. But if you are that worried about your appearance, you are also well aware that this girl is shallow and probably using you. How hot is she?” Stamford looked a little floored. “Because she must be breathtaking. But anyway. Like I said. It won’t last long. Either she’ll get tired of you and jump to the next, richer, better looking young man, or you’ll remember that you are intelligent and dump her first. Enjoy the lab.” He sailed out of the room, leaving a slightly peeved and mostly dumbstruck Stamford behind him. 

It wasn’t until he was halfway down the hall that he opened the note. Dr Bell was the one who had requested him. That was interesting. It was bound to be something good, if Dr Bell was involved.

***  
“Ah, Mr Holmes,” said Dr Bell. He didn’t look surprised. He stood behind an autopsy table. The body laid out on it was already prepped, though it hadn’t been cut into just yet. “Why don’t you tell me what you see?”

“Why?” asked Sherlock, a little suspiciously, moving slowly toward the table. “What happened?”

 

“That’s what I want you to determine. Obviously, I can’t tell you any details. They might color your findings.”

It was another of Bell’s little tests then. He was always trying to expand Sherlock’s own natural ability to observe and deduce. So he pulled on a pair of gloves and began to inspect the body. When he discovered the slightly broken veins on the man’s forearm, he looked up. Bell smiled.

“Why Mr Holmes. I do believe we’ve found something.” 

“What exactly are we looking for, Dr Bell?”

“You know that I work with the police sometimes, yes?” Sherlock nodded. “Sometimes they call me in when someone has died...unexpectedly. Our mortician found the same thing that you and I did, but unlike us, decided that there was nothing odd about it.”

“Not even placement?” asked Sherlock, furrowing his brow. “If he was a user, he’d have put it closer to the crook of his arm, wouldn’t he?”

“Depends on how long he used. Addicts find all sorts of places to stick a needle, once they’ve used up the veins on their arms. But no, forearms are not the first place a person would go. They look for places to hide a needle mark, and this man,” he gestured, “has perfectly good veins everywhere else.” He held up a small syringe. “I know your focus is on genetics and chemistry,” said the doctor. “But how would you feel about a little pathology?” 

******  
Pathology, as it turned out, was brilliant. Sherlock had a little understanding of human anatomy, not as much as some, perhaps, but enough to get by. He knew acupuncture points (and pressure points), and where the best places to hit a person to incapacitate them (or kill them) were, and why those places were more effective than others (why a strike to the solar plexus or the fulcrum was better than one to the cheek or gut, for instance). He understood the physics of why striking with two knuckles only was better than four, why striking with the fingertips was even more effective than a fist (it was all physics really). He knew how blood vessels worked, how to tell if someone’s _weren’t_ working properly just by looking (and Dr Bell had explained how different maladies tended to create different issues with said blood vessels). But a general knowledge of anatomy and an ability to use that knowledge to effectively fight was a very different thing than what Dr Bell was teaching him now.

He’d never had such unrestricted access to the morgue before, and with Doctor Bell, he was allowed to see all sorts of interesting things. He saw smokers lungs (and grimaced a little, to think that _that_ might be how he went out--how horrible would that be?) and a cancerous pancreas, an alcoholic's liver and a diabetics leg. He saw the victims of overdoses, of bar fights, of domestic violence. At first, Doctor Bell only let him watch. Sometimes, Molly Hooper was there too. Sherlock protested this, but apparently, this was _actually_ Molly’s field of study, which was annoying. But she was quicker than most people, he allowed. And she was definitely better at handling corpses than living people, which was interesting. 

****

The car crash was what changed everything. Sherlock had never felt so fortuitous in his entire life. But it was going to change _everything_.

“Four?” he asked, confused when he received Bell’s summons to the morgue. He’d never gotten to look at more than one body at a time before this. 

“Tell me what happened,” was the calm reply. Sherlock sighed, but Bell was implacable. He always refused to tell Sherlock any details at all until he’d already examined the bodies (or the body parts) and given his findings. Sherlock was mostly grateful for this. It was certainly the best way to ensure that he _learned_ something, instead of bullshitting his way through like everyone else in the world. 

He started with the man. Judging by looks alone, this was probably a family. Father, mother, two boys. Young family, the eldest child was certainly no more than fourteen. He didn’t waste time with feeling bad. There was no point. He hadn’t known these people, and they were dead anyway. Feeling sorry for them, even the children, was pointless. And distracting. He pushed their ages out of his mind. It wasn’t important. 

All four were already naked, ready for the potential autopsy. He examined the father’s chest, then the mothers before drawing the obvious conclusion. Sherlock made sure to look at both boys too, just in case. 

“Car crash,” he said, after a few more minutes of silent examination. “Father was driving.” He bent closer. “Yes. Smallish car, I’d think, just a family vehicle. A newer model, or it wouldn’t have been so utterly decimated.”

“You think?”

Sherlock shifted. The questions always threw him off a bit. “Yes,” he decided, assuring himself that he was definitely correct. “The older cars of the sixties through the eighties were metal. Even if they got smashed into by a trolley, which is likely in this case, judging by the news reports of large traffic jams on the M25, the older cars didn’t crumple as much. Judging by the injuries, the car was entirely totaled. And it took a good deal of time to uncrumble it. That boy,” he pointed to the smallest of the still figures, “was definitely alive for a bit longer than the rest of them. Long enough that they actually got him into the hospital.” They’d begun prepping him for surgery, it was obvious. He’d died before he could get there though. 

“And that equates to ‘new car?’”

“Yes,” he replied. “The new cars talk about having the bumpers, right? They are supposed to crumple up a bit, because it cushions the impact. Which is fine, in theory, but doesn’t hold up well when the car in question is so _much_ smaller than whatever hit it. Because the trucks aren’t made with plastic. And also,” he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and started carefully carding through the mother’s hair, before he found what he was looking for, “the evidence is still on the bodies.” It would have been on the clothes otherwise. 

Bell nodded. “Well done. Anything else?”

Sherlock hesitated, and shrugged. “I could give them a bit more of a look,”he said, hesitantly. Bell nodded, and Sherlock began examining them again, this time starting with the children. There was something very odd about the eldest child, he thought. Something he was   
_just_ missing. It was galling. He barely even noticed Bell leaving the room, even though he wasn’t supposed to leave the morgue unattended if it was just Sherlock, or even Molly here. The morgue attendant, and the resident pathologist would both be rather furious. 

He wondered why Bell was here anyway. They didn’t usually call him in to examine the bodies like this, not unless they suspected foul play. A car accident wasn’t usually considered anything malicious. That’s when he noticed it. A slight darkening of the fingertips of the elder boy. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But it seemed wrong for the accident. The fingers looked almost burned, or frostbitten perhaps. There was no other indication of severe fire though, and no one else had any other discoloration of skin, other than the lividity that death brought naturally. Sherlock used the gloves to carefully draw his own fingers over those of the boy. Cold, but not unnaturally so. He took a needle and inserted it into the boy’s middle finger. Almost immediately, the needle froze. Sherlock stilled. Fascinating. A mutation that somehow managed to continue after death. He examined the bodies again. There, yes! The father had a bit of a mark, just like the son, on the back of his neck. 

He checked over the other bodies again. Difficult to tell with no information, but if the boy had rather suddenly come into this power...arguments, he’d heard, strong stressful environments...could bring out a sudden manifestation of a mutant’s ability, and he’d used it, however accidentally on his father...yes. Father had definitely died first, and the placement of the mark on his neck...it was probably an accident, but a sudden freezing shock like that….it could have killed him quickly, if what had happened to the needle was any indication. And the car, out of control, and careened headlong into an oncoming lorry….or something like that, the nuances of the accident didn’t matter to him. But this….this was a chance unlike any he’d ever had. None of the others had an obvious mutation, but he didn’t want to take chances. Bell was still gone.

He stole a few small vials, a few syringes, and he got to work. He collected blood and hair samples from all four, labeling them carefully, and secreting them on his person. He could examine them later. It was a bit mercenary of him, he knew that. But he was getting nowhere with his own research. This...this was a gift.

Doctor Joseph Bell waited what he hoped was an appropriate amount of time, wasting away several minutes at the coffee pot, chatting with the morgue attendant. Sherlock was a bright boy, but he could be a bit dense sometimes. He forgot that Bell, even if maybe he wasn’t quite as naturally gifted as Sherlock himself was, still had a rather formidable brain. He had figured out very early on just what Sherlock was, and what his mysterious project involved. It was tricky, trying to mold Sherlock’s mind while allowing him to see that it was alright to be human once and awhile, and not letting the boy know that he knew his secret, but Bell was nothing if not clever. He really shouldn’t let Sherlock take anything from the morgue, not without express permission, written in triplicate and signed by a plethora of higher-ups...but Bell was convinced that Sherlock’s work was important. He’d found the articles describing the existence of what the author called an “M Gene,” and he was certain that if he was given access to just a bit more information, that young author would be able to discover quite a lot about not just mutants, but humans in general. So when he was certain Sherlock had been left alone long enough, not only to discover the mutant boys secret, but also to do something about it, he re-entered the room.   
“I do hope you haven’t made an utter mess of everything, these bodies do still have to be processed.” 

****  
Sherlock was practically vibrating to get back to work as soon as he managed to smuggle the blood and hair out of the lab. He had a lovely little cooling box that he would probably never return hidden under his jacket (it was a little too cool to be going about without a jacket, but not so cold that he’d get weird looks), and a plan to start his experiments right away. 

Wilkes caught him before he got even halfway to his destination.  
“What are you doing here?”asked Sherlock, a little horrified.   
Wilkes just grinned. “You don’t wanna see me?” he asked. “I’m hurt, Sherlock, truly I am.”  
Sherlock sighed. “No, I just...I have things I need to do.”  
“You’ve been cooped up in a lab all bloody afternoon,” objected Sebastian. “Come on. Don’t be such a stick in the mud. I thought we trained all the boring out of you.”  
“I’m not boring,” objected Sherlock.  
“Right,” was the unconvinced reply. “That’s why you sit around in your lab and don’t talk to anyone or go out unless you’re forced.”  
“Other scientists wouldn’t find it boring.”  
“You aren’t a scientist,” pointed out Sebastian. “You’re a student. God Holmes, it’s no wonder you haven’t any friends. I mean, besides the abrasive personality and the proclivity for pointing out other people’s secrets.”  
“You _ask_ me to do that!”  
Sebastian just raised his eyebrows. “Not all the time, I don’t. Dave Miller is a friend. He didn’t deserve to be embarrassed like that in front of everyone.”  
“Then he shouldn’t have come into the main dining hall smelling like beer and cheap perfume,” snapped Sherlock, holding his coat and precious little box closer to his chest. “I was doing everyone else a favor. If Miller is willing to sleep with prostitutes, other people should be made aware of what they are getting into. I know for a fact he’s got a girlfriend in the English school and she’s actually rather nice.”  
He’d met Stacy once or twice. She hadn’t exactly spoken to him, much, but she had pulled her friend away, the one who’d been actively taunting him. He didn’t say any of that to Sebastian though.   
“You’re a bleeding heart, Holmes,” replied Sebastian. “A man’s got needs. Well. Maybe _you_ don’t, but I’m still not convinced that you’re human most of the time.”  
That hurt. Sherlock swallowed. He wanted to object, to argue. But he didn’t. Sometimes even he wasn’t sure. Were mutants human? Or were they something else entirely? Another species? Just an accident in evolution? Or perhaps the next step, like that Magneto nutter seemed to think?   
“I’ll go out with you,” he relented. “I just...let me put my things away.”  
“And change,” added Sebastian. “You smell like a bloody corpse.”

***8888***888***

From: doyle.ac@oxbridge.edu  
To: drbeast.mccoy@xmail.com  
Subject: M Gene

Dr McCoy,  
Since we last corresponded, I have discovered something that I believe will change the way we view mutation and genetics as a whole. 

I recently was afforded the opportunity to study blood samples of two entire families. In both, only the children showed signs of mutation, and both had four members--the obvious two parents (male and female) and two offspring, both male. Upon looking back at the medical records, it was discovered that in both cases, all children were the natural offspring of both parents. No chemicals or other scientific intervention were used in conception. 

In the first family, the oldest boy, recently turned fourteen, was the only one to present with a mutation. However, the M gene was also found in the blood of the younger brother. The younger did not present with any obvious mutation, but it is possible that, like with most mutations, it would have revealed itself during puberty. 

The most interesting thing that I found was that though the M gene was nowhere to be found in the mother’s blood, it did present in the fathers. It is possible that the father did have a mutation that was impossible to determine for my own experiment, but it seems more likely that it was recessive. It was intriguing to me that both boys had inherited it, if that is indeed the case.

However, I bring this to you because of the second family. Again, this is a family of four, two boys, and their parents. Both boys, in this case, present with a mutation, one physical, and one not. In this case, the father once again had the M gene sequence. However, this time, the mother had it as well, though as I said, neither parent presented with an actual mutation of any kind. 

I believe that you have more access to such families than I do at the moment. I would be very much obliged if you were to assist me in further experiments. I don’t know if your professor will be willing to help, but I believe that you want to get to the crux of this matter just as much as I do. 

Many thanks,  
D.

 

Mycroft had been most helpful in getting their parents blood samples. Sherlock had   
_known_ that Mycroft was just as interested in his research as Sherlock himself was, even if the prat wouldn’t admit it. But the thought of actually getting a proper answer had spurred his brother to extremes that even Sherlock hadn’t thought he was capable of. He wasn’t sure how Mycroft had gotten the samples, his brother had just handed them over, properly labeled, properly stored. Siger Holmes. Violet Holmes. Mycroft Holmes. There had been plenty for Sherlock’s experiments, and he even still had some left over, for just in case. 

It was a huge step forward for him, for his research, though he found it difficult to go much farther. Dr McCoy though. He worked at that school. Surely he could find a few families willing to participate. Especially those looking for a cure. People were always looking for a cure. Oh, sure _officially_ the school was for the ‘gifted,’ and most people (idiots) chose to assume that meant gifted intellectually, but anyone with half a brain could tell it meant mutants. Just look at the staff! Half of them were known mutants, and some of them couldn’t even hide said mutation. Like Beast. “Who chose that name anyway?” Sherlock asked the computer. “It seems a bit cruel. I certainly wouldn’t allow my friends to call me that.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Sherlock jumped, and exited the window.   
“Sebastian,” he said. “Um. You’ve come to the lab. Again.”  
“My tutor is here,” he pouted. “You’ve been here for _days_ Sherlock, and my chemistry grade is suffering for it. You don’t want to be the reason I fail, do you?”  
“Sebastian,” he replied coldly, “if you fail, it will be because you can’t be bothered to study the materials that I give you. It is hardly my fault if you can’t keep Hydrogen separate from Helium in your head.”  
“They different?” was the quipped response. “Look, Sherlock, don’t be an arse for once in your life. You said you’d help me, and you’ve been locked up in here for days. You promised me your help, Holmes.”  
Sherlock heaved a sigh. He had to wait for McCoy’s response anyway. “Very well Sebastian. Lead the way.”

***888***888***  
To: doyle.ac@oxbridge.edu  
From:drbeast.mccoy@xmail.com

Subject: Re: M Gene

Doyle--apologies at the time it took me to get back to you on this. It took quite a bit of convincing for the professor to allow me to find people willing to participate in this phase of research. And then, finding others willing to participate, much less families….well, as I said. I am sorry it took so long. 

But when you see the results, I believe you’ll find it was worth the wait. I think that you are truly onto something here. Attached you’ll find a complete report of what I found when I replicated your experiment. In summary though, no matter what variables I changed--age, sex, type of mutation, the results seem to be very similar in all cases. 

If both parents present with your M Gene, then the children are mutants as well. You never see a family in which both parents have a mutation, and the children do not. If both parents have a recessive M Gene, then a child is very likely to be a mutant--though it is also possible to find one child that is merely a carrier, and the other is fully mutant.

If only the mother carries the M Gene, then the children do not carry it at all.

If only the father carries the M Gene, then it is passed down to the children.

This is a huge find, Doyle. If we can continue this research, do it properly with grants etc, instead of fumbling our way in the dark, legitimize it--we are talking Nobel prizes for sure.

-Hank McCoy  
 _1 attachment_ mgenegraphs1

From: doyle.ac@oxbridge.net  
To: drbeast.mccoy@xmail.com

Subject: Re:Re: M Gene

If you can get the grants, feel free to do as you like with the research. I shall publish my own little essay, but by all means, if you want a Nobel prize, make this project your own. I have no need for such a prize.  
Nobel invented dynamite. I detest hypocrisy. It is enough for me to find the answers that have plagued me all my life.   
I’m one step closer with this result. Thank you for your help. I will surely be in touch.

-D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. There it is. Seb is still a dick. Joseph Bell is not a dick. Sherlock is kind of an ass, but that's to be expected.
> 
> Not a dialogue heavy chapter. Not an anything heavy chapter really. Sorry. I just wanted to get this bit out of the way I think.  
> Drama and angst is coming soon.  
> Next chapter is an interlude again (for some reason I love those) and it will be Sherlock falling more and more into addiction. And the chapter after that, we meet Lestrade! Yay!
> 
> If you are wondering---I do have the entire story mapped out. I have a basic outline. A very basic outline, for the entire thing. Just...the outlines tend to be like, ten lines maybe. Some of them are like...four. Super basic. I know generally how I want things to go, but the specifics sort of surprise me sometimes. And then things get long. My original M Gene story was seven chapters long. So. Yeah. 
> 
> Sorry again for the wait, and I cannot promise that the next chapter will be up really soon, though I can promise it will happn.


	13. Lestrade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestrade and Sherlock meet. Also Sally. And Anderson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very different sort of chapter. It is almost entirely Lestrade and his perspective on things, as opposed to Sherlock's POV. I was debating making this a work of it's own, and I still might do that--make alt. POV chapters occasionally, and just make them in to a drabble part all their own. Your thoughts?

Greg Lestrade glared at the files on his desk as though they had insulted his mother. It wasn’t good time management, he knew. It wasn’t like the pile of work would get smaller because he _glared_ at it. Still, it made him feel a little better. For about thirty seconds. He sighed and rubbed his temples. It had been a long night. The baby (well, she was almost two now, not exactly a _baby_ in the strictest sense of the word) had decided that sleep was for fools and kept waking up, screaming. Five year old Allie, would then in turn wake up and decide that she wanted some attention too, and pretended that she’d had nightmares. Both girls had been cranky this morning, and Lydia had been snappish and angry. He’d not bothered to stay for breakfast after the third time she’d yelled at him for trying to help with the pancakes. If he was just going to be in the way, he might as well go to work. He’d forgotten how shitty it was to do mounds of paperwork on no sleep and only two and a half cups of coffee. 

 

He sighed again, and then stood, stretching. He took his coffee mug and left his office, making his way for the crappy coffee maker. He really hadn’t gotten nearly as much done by now as he should have. He wished that he had the excuse that some of the younger officers had. But he didn’t have any ‘fun’ reason for his slowness today. He longed for the days where he could at least have _claimed_ to have a hangover. He took several long sips of the still too hot coffee, ignoring the burn at his tongue and throat, and poured himself another mugful, before returning to his office. A young man stood there, a kid, really, looked maybe twenty, file in his hand, scanning through it absently. He didn’t notice Lestrade. He shook his dark hair out of his eyes and tossed the file aside with a little snort, and muttering ‘obvious.’ Lestrade glanced down at his desk. There were two other files there too, definitely not where he’d put them. Whichever case the kid was looking at now must have been incredibly easy, because it only took about thirty seconds for it to go the way of the previous file, tossed unceremoniously on the desk. 

 

“Can I help you?” Lestrade asked, a false cheer evident in his voice. The rookie froze with his hand halfway to the next file. “I don’t know who told you that you could come in here,” he continued, “but you aren’t allowed to go through my files.”

 

The kid turned around, and Lestrade could see him fully. Yeah, he was young. Maybe a tiny bit older than twenty, but not by much. He rocked back on his heels a little, then up to his toes, as if judging whether or not to run. “Door was open,” he said, after a moment. He seemed to be making an effort to speak slowly. “Seemed to be enough of an invitation.”

 

“The door was--” Greg sighed, and took another sip of coffee, barely managing to hide his wince. “That doesn’t mean you can come in! I get that maybe they haven’t told you the rules yet, but I’m a Detective Sergeant. Some of the things that I have access too are classified for rookies.” 

 

The kid opened his mouth and then closed it again, seeming to think better of whatever he’d have to say. Then he opened it again. “Talk to the secretary at Woodheath school again,” he said. “She’s the one that was doing the stealing, it’s obvious, she forged the headmaster’s signature on both the delivery and removal of property, and she pocketed the refund. And you got too hung up on the Kidman case. The brother had nothing to do with it, even if he did have a history of petty theft, the book wasn’t his style. He likes flashy things, and he’s an idiot. According to the record in the file, the last time he served time he got caught because he didn’t notice that the rings he was selling were fake. The book had no obvious value, and he had no way of knowing that it would sell at such a price, and even if he did...he had no way to sell to that kind of clientele. It was the father-in-law, it’s so obvious. And yes, I know he was the one who reported the book stolen, but I bet he took out a hefty policy on it, didn’t he? And probably the whole collection that it was a part of. I bet he used a brand new off-shore account, something he thought was untraceable because he too, is obviously an idiot. And the coats that Mrs Dubry is trying to say were worth several thousand pounds were actually only about seventy quid or so. I know that because I’ve seen them before at knockoff back-alley sorts of places. There are some very distinctive designs on the trim that make it clear that the coats that she is missing are not designer. I’d pass that one along to insurance fraud, if that’s a department here.”

 

Greg stared at him. The kid spoke incredibly quickly, and he kept glancing at the door, as if he was unsure he’d have time to even say all of that. Greg blinked a few times, trying to sort out everything that he’d said. “What?” he asked, somewhat unintelligently. 

 

The rookie rolled his eyes. “Your cases. They are boring. And simple. I only came in here because I thought a detective sergeant would have access to something _interesting_. But you’re just larceny. It’s dull.”

 

Greg wasn’t sure he liked this kid just...deciding that his job was dull, even if he agreed. He was in line to move to homicide, and really, he knew the transfer would come through any week now, but….who was this rookie to prance in here and just help himself? And Greg was pretty sure this kid had just called him an idiot. 

 

“What’s your name, rookie?”

 

“Holmes,” he said, promptly, then looked angry at himself. Lestrade didn’t really have time to wonder why that was, because Detective Hobbs stormed into the room, furious and out of breath.

 

“You fucker,” he seethed. Greg blinked before he realized that Hobbs wasn’t talking to him, but this Holmes character. “Can’t take my eyes off you for a fucking minute, and you fuck off.”

 

“Impressive language,” drawled Holmes. “I can see how you got to be a detective so fast, with that sort of vocabulary.”

 

“I am sorry if this….this...this _stain_ is bothering you, Detective Sergeant,” said Hobbs. “I had him locked up, but he slipped his cuffs.” Holmes grinned. Greg stared at him. 

 

“You arrested him?” he said, a little stunned. “He doesn’t work here?”

 

Hobbs laughed, a short, angry bark. “Work here? Perish the thought. The day Sherlock Holmes works for the Yard is the day London burns to the ground. He’s nothing but a junkie who thinks he’s something clever.”

 

“Wrong,” interjected Sherlock. “I’m a junkie who _knows_ he’s more clever than the whole lot of you put together. Especially an overweight middle management type with a cheating wife, a penchant for cheating on his own diets, and a slight addiction problem himself. Two bottles of Oxy is too much for one glove compartment.” He grinned, wolfishly at Hobbs, who grew redder. 

 

“I don’t explain myself to you,” he snarled, grabbing at Holmes’ arm. “You’re going to the holding cell till I can book you.” He glanced over at Lestrade. “They’re prescription,” he said, a little falteringly. “For my back.”

 

Sherlock snorted. Greg raised his eyebrows and the kid just made a little locking motion with his fingers over his lips. He glanced meaningfully at the files, and let Hobbs lead him out of the room. Greg sighed, and wrote a little email to IA first, to check out Hobbs and see if he really did have a drug problem. Greg had worked on the drugs squad for a little when he’d been a rookie. You couldn’t get a second bottle before your prescription ran out, no matter how bad your pain was. He rubbed at his jaw, staring at the files spread out on his desk. He didn’t really want to take the word of some coked-out junkie, but...well, it couldn’t hurt to take another look.

 

****

 

Several hours later, Lestrade sat back in his chair, a little nonplussed. Well, stunned, was probably a more apt description. Because everything seemed to check out. Everything that kid had said, looking over the files in the five or so minutes he’d had...it was obvious, now that he was thinking about it. How could Lestrade have missed this? He had a solid close rate, he was good at his job, but...damn, Holmes was good. They’d have to get him clean, and...well, work around the system a bit, but they might be able to get him as a consultant if he proved that he could do this when he was clearheaded. 

 

Greg spent the next hour trying to find Sherlock Holmes. No one seemed to know who or where he was. Hobbs was nowhere to be found, and booking claimed that they didn’t have a record of Sherlock Holmes ever spending time in a cell. The kid was just gone. 

 

It wasn’t until two days later and three closed cases, mostly thanks to Sherlock’s unique observations, that he heard the name ‘Mycroft Holmes.’ It was spoken almost reverently, almost a whisper, but apparently, he had clearance that made the Chief Superintendent's clearance look like level one, and which probably was part of an organization that only barely existed it was so top level secret. The strange things he heard about Mycroft Holmes (and seriously, the way people talked about him, he was practically Voldemort) made pretty much everything he knew about Sherlock Holmes make sense.

 

It was still unnerving when, three days later, he was walking to his car and a dark-sweatshirted figure fell into step next to him. Lestrade was reaching for his billy club when he recognized the thin face and tired eyes. Sherlock looked sober though, his pupils a normal size, though he seemed a bit frazzled. “You did what I said,” he sounded a little surprised. “No one ever does what I say.”

 

“You made some good points,” replied Lestrade, dropping his hand back down to his side, relaxing. “And you were right. You solved those cases in minutes, Mr Holmes, that was very impressive.”

 

“Sherlock,” he said, automatically. “I’m younger than you, Lestrade.”

 

“Sherlock,” said Greg, nodding. “Anyway. That was good work. If you were a consultant with the Yard, you could look over cases from time to time.”

 

“Hardly,” he made a face. “Like the Yard would hire me. I have a record. And I’d never work for the police anyway. You’re all a bunch of idiots that can’t see the truth even when it is pointed out to them, just because you don’t like who is telling you the information.” 

 

“Well, a druggie is not generally the best source of intel.”

 

“See? That’s why I’ll never work for the Yard. A druggie can be an _invaluable_ source of information. It just depends on what sort of information you want to get. Also, I was barely high the other day. Hobbs just practically arrests me on sight these days because one time I stole his panda car and crashed it.”

 

“That was _you?_ ” Everyone knew that story. Mostly, Greg knew, people thought Hobbs had deserved it. He’d left his keys in the ignition for crying out loud, and the door open. 

 

“Yeah,” Sherlock looked pleased. “He was harassing a friend of mine. She wasn’t even doing anything wrong, but he thought she was tricking. And he got out of the car and well, honestly, both of us were pretty sure he was trying to buy her, even though she has way higher standards than that, and….he left the door open so.” He shrugged. “It was fun.” And he’d gotten away too, after crashing the car, he’d managed to get away down a back alley and up a fire escape and there’d never been any real proof that he’d done it anyway. “That wasn’t a confession,” he added. “As you said before, druggies are not valuable sources of intel.”

 

“Hey, I used your intel remember?” pointed out Lestrade. “And anyway, he didn’t try to press charges for that incident because then he’d have had to admit all the things that he did wrong too. So even if it was a confession, you wouldn’t serve time for it.” 

 

Sherlock thought about that for a moment. He supposed that...yes, it was true. This particular detective had known that he had been arrested for drugs (use or possession, it didn’t matter), and he’d still followed up on Sherlock’s suggestions. 

 

“You should move to homicide,” he said. “It would be far more interesting than whatever it is you do now.”

 

Greg sighed. “Look kid,” he said. “Really, thanks for your help. And if you get clean, I really don’t see a reason that you couldn’t be a consultant of some kind, as soon as we get you cleared by the Yard. But now...I gotta get home, okay?”

 

“I’m not a kid. Don’t talk to me like I am one. And you don’t want to go home that badly anyway. You’re fighting with your wife and your kids aren’t sleeping, and you don’t want to have another fight about how you are more married to the job than your wife. And you know it’s coming because it is already eight.” 

 

Lestrade stared at him. “How...what?”

 

Sherlock smirked. “It’s obvious. There is a picture in your office, obviously a child’s drawing. It’s old, and in it there are three people, you, your wife, your child, and an arrow pointing at your immensely fat wife’s belly with the word ‘baby.’ But you are always tired, you drink way too much coffee, and you are often at work early, and you leave late, which means you don’t actually want to be at home right now, probably because your children are being total brats, which is pretty standard at their ages, really. And I am pretty sure that every police officer ever has the argument with their spouse that they care about the job more than them--which...is a stupid argument to have because they are the ones that marry you, it isn’t like anyone’s ever lied about that. And you missed dinner. Also, you missed a spot shaving and if your wife was not fighting with you, she’d have let you know.” 

 

Greg just stared at him. “You can’t have guessed all that. You...spied on me or….looked me up.” 

 

Sherlock shrugged. “If it helps you to believe that, then fine. But I did solve four cases in under five minutes, so. Make of that what you will.”

 

“Four? I only knew about three.”

 

“Hobbs interrupted us. I figured out the Mancetti case too.”

 

Lestrade glared. “You did?”

 

“Sure. It was a bit trickier than some of the others, but no real hardship.” 

 

Lestrade sighed. “Alright, fine. Who do I look for?”

 

“Not who. What.”

 

“What?”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“No,” said Greg. “I am not doing this. I am not doing some weird Abbott and Costello sketch.”

 

Sherlock looked blankly at him. “Who?”

 

“Never mind. I just said I’m not doing it. What am I looking for?”

 

“Oh. The dog.”

 

“The dog?”

 

“Are you going to repeat everything I say? I don’t remember asking for a parrot.”

 

“Don’t be an arse. Just tell me about the dog.”

 

“Wife took the dog when she left. They’d just gotten a divorce, right, and he said that was why he hadn’t noticed the missing items. They weren’t found among the wife’s things when her flat was searched.”

 

“Right, so how do you get from there to the dog?”

 

“Well. Probably, you technically want to double check with the wife,” admitted Sherlock. “She fed the cufflinks to the dog before she left. She really was getting a raw deal, with the divorce proceedings. And well. She fed the thousand dollar a piece cufflinks to the dog, when the police checked her home, she didn’t have them . All she had to do was wait, and then she could see them. I’d see if she has been to any jewelers or pawn shops since the police last searched her home.”

 

“That’s a bit of a stretch.”

 

Sherlock shrugged. “She took the dog for a reason,” he said. “Mr Mancetti said he always kept dog treats in his desk, even though the items in that room were all incredibly expensive. Usually, a dog wouldn’t have been allowed in such a room, especially a typically exuberant breed like a golden retriever. So he obviously liked the dog a lot. Mrs Mancetti, on the other hand, pays for a dog walker.”

 

“So?”

 

“So she works from home,” said Sherlock. “People hire dog walkers if they can’t be at home to walk and feed the dog at reasonable times. She has no excuses to not let the dog out herself. Ergo, she doesn’t like the dog, and she only insisted on taking it because she had a use for it.” 

 

Lestrade sighed. “I’ll look into it. And into getting you a job as a consultant, if you promise to stay sober.”

 

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” said Sherlock. “I’m not an addict, Detective. But I’m not about to let a job I don’t want rule my life.”

 

“It’s illegal.”

 

“And I don’t have anything on me, and I haven’t for days,” said Sherlock. “I would test clean. Keep your consultant job.” He paused. “We can discuss it again when you are a homicide detective.” 

 

He waved, and shoved his hands into his pocket, striding off in the other direction. After a minute though, his whole demeanor changed. He went from walking with a straight back, confident steps….to slouching, head ducked forward, feet barely lifting from the ground as he seemed to all but trip away. He looked like an entirely different person. It was impressive, actually. Lestrade probably wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t seen the transformation take place He shook his head, and he slipped into his car. 

 

****  
“He’s back,” Sally’s low voice made Greg glance up, eyes automatically drawn to the inevitable crowd of onlookers that always accompanied the police tape and flashing lights that signified that something terrible had happened. Greg gave a tiny sigh. “Let him through,” he said.

 

“You’re not serious,” she replied, eyebrows raised. “Again? It looks pretty cut and dry, don’t you think?”

 

“He’s here,” pointed out Lestrade. “And I am too tired to waste my energy kicking him out.” 

 

Sally sighed and walked over to the police tape, holding it up for Sherlock to duck under. 

 

“Hello Detective Constable,” he said, before immediately informing her, “you had a date. Sorry it didn’t go well.” 

 

Sally shook her head. “It is so freaky how you do that.” They fell into step as they walked toward Greg, still inspecting the body on the ground. “I mean, seriously, do you follow me around?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous. How dull. It would be more interesting following around Detective Sergeant Lestrade, and all that is happening in his life right now is that the baby has colic.”

 

Sally glanced at her superior officer. “Really?”

 

Greg stood. “Yeah. We thought it was just a bad cold, but we went to the doctor yesterday. Definitely colic.”

 

Sherlock looked smug, and Sally shook her head. “Seriously freaky.”

 

His smug look turned vaguely annoyed. “Could you maybe find a different adjective?” he asked. “‘Freaky’ is getting quite tired out.” Sherlock could stomach many things, but he really hated being called a freak, even if he should probably be used to it by now.

 

Greg could sense an argument brewing. Honestly, they bickered like children sometimes, these two. They’d only worked together a handful of times (and no, Greg did not think that it was a coincidence that his transfer to Homicide had been completed shortly after his conversation with Sherlock in the car park that day, or that it hadn’t taken long at all for Sherlock to turn up at a crime scene, shouting out various ‘interesting facts,’ as he called them from the public side of the police tape. Greg’s DI had eventually arrested him due to his seemingly too accurate information. 

 

His alibi had checked out though, and she’d agreed that he had useful information, but told him that he couldn’t just shout out privileged intel like that, especially if the media was near. Sherlock had taken that as a clue to basically invite himself into crime scenes. DI Tobias was not really okay with that, but after the third time she’d arrested Sherlock for trespassing and impeding a police investigation, she’d...suddenly become a lot more lenient. Greg did not ever want to find out why. 

 

“Sherlock,” he said, sternly, trying to calm things between the young man and DC Donovan, “just...tell me what you see.” 

 

Sally was right, this one was pretty cut and dried, but the last time Sherlock had approached him at the Yard, he’d brought with him cold Chinese food that he didn’t seem to realize wasn’t hot anymore, and he’d been...not in a good way. He might say that he wasn’t an addict, but Lestrade could tell that he wasn’t going to be able to stay away from the cocaine much longer. He was better when he was helping on a case. Sherlock looked better today, which was...suspicious, but Lestrade didn’t want to press his luck. And even if Sherlock had fallen off the wagon, he was sober right now, and the case might help him stay that way.

 

It didn’t take long before Sherlock was rattling off deductions at a mile a minute and Sally was slightly grudgingly taking notes. She griped a lot, but she knew that Sherlock was almost always right. And even if he couldn’t figure out everything from just a glance around the crime scene, he always had some good insights that they could follow up on later. Lestrade felt himself calm a little. Crisis averted. For now.

 

*****  
Sherlock was screaming at the new forensic tech. Philip Anderson was a recent transfer, and he was quite well recommended. He was newly married, and he was fairly easy-going. Which did not explain exactly why Sherlock was all but cursing him out for his extreme inadequacies. “--can’t believe you don’t even know the difference between a steak knife puncture and a bread knife, look at the serrated edges you moron--”

 

Anderson was going redder and redder, rage and embarrassment reducing him to sputtering incoherent sounds at Sherlock, who seemed to take that as proof that he was right about Anderson being a complete idiot and whose tirade was only just warming up. A few of the other techs were snickering a little, which didn’t help Anderson’s emotional state very much. Unable to come up with a proper response, he hauled back and punched Sherlock square in the nose. Sherlock’s head snapped around, and he was all but snarling when he turned to face Anderson again, his face nearly feral with rage. Lestrade grabbed him before he managed to attack Anderson again.

 

“What the fuck happened?” snapped the older detective, putting himself in between Anderson and the still almost apoplectic Sherlock. He’d never seen the younger man so furious. He’d only known Sherlock for about a year, but still, it was enough time to have seen him in quite a few states of mind, but he’d never seen him _angry_ like this. Annoyed, frustrated, pissed off….but not furious.

 

“I don’t know!” Anderson finally managed to get out a complete sentence. “I was just doing my preliminary examination of the mutie, and this freak shows up out of nowhere and starts insulting me!”

 

Greg blinked a little. “Alright,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Let’s ah. Not use slurs for our victims, first of all Anderson. This is still a dead person, and we still have to find out who did this to them.”

 

Anderson still looked angry. “Sorry sir. But it is just a mutant.” He glanced distastefully down at the body, still sprawled at his feet, her lizard-like skin glinting oddly in the cold emergency lights they’d put up in the room. 

 

Lestrade clenched his jaw briefly, before forcing himself to relax. “Anderson, let me make myself clear. I respect your experience, and your resume speaks for itself, but I will not tolerate bigotry on my team, understand?”

 

“Yes,” Anderson muttered. “But who _is_ this...this...arsehole anyway? He isn’t on the squad! He has no right to be here!”

 

Lestrade turned to look more fully at Sherlock, still looking murderous and terrifying, with blood dripping down his face. His pupils were just...well, quite a bit on the wrong side of normal. Damn. “He’s a civilian consultant,” said Lestrade. “And he was just leaving.”

 

“What?” squawked Sherlock. “I haven’t investigated the body yet!”

 

“Too bad,” said Lestrade. “You are here by invitation only, and when you attack my team, your invitation gets revoked.” He started to pull Sherlock away. When they were far enough away from Anderson, or anyone else on the team, he released his grip on Sherlock’s arm. Sherlock rubbed it absently, and Lestrade knew he’d have bruises the next day, but he was too angry to care. “This never happens again,” hissed Greg. “You hear me Sherlock? Never.”

 

“You heard what he--”

 

“I don’t care,” he interrupted. “If you ever show up to one of my crime scenes high again, I will arrest you, and it won’t just be for obstructing an investigation like DI Tobias, it will before felonious possession of a Class A substance. You will never get near another investigation again.”

 

Sherlock looked a little mutinous, “I’m fine,” he snapped. “That...that pimple was wrong. He didn’t even know the sort of knife--”

 

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say right now Sherlock. Go home, sober up, and maybe I’ll let you come in on another case next month.”

 

Sherlock all but growled at him, before turning and stalking away. Greg watched him go and sighed. He was still angry, but he’d feel badly about it later, he knew. He’d go to Sherlock’s flat and make sure the bastard didn’t accidentally off himself or something.

 

****  
Sherlock wasn’t answering his phone. That almost never happened. Lestrade was a little alarmed by it in fact, as it had been almost seven hours and there was no sign of a response. Things had been going fairly well. Sherlock had assisted on two more cases since Lestrade had been forced to kick him off the scene for the altercation with Anderson (officially) and being there high (unofficially) and he’d been helping with this latest case--what looked like it was an actual, honest to god, serial killer. He’d been almost manic about it, and just a little too gleeful. It was unnerving to pretty much everyone really, but they’d found the latest body before the killer had had time to complete his little (creepy) ritual with it, so they knew that there’d be another body soon if they didn’t catch him. Sherlock had been certain he’d been close to a breakthrough, and now...it had been hours since he’d answered any of Lestrade’s calls or texts. Or emails. It wasn’t like him, even on a case, to not answer his phone.

 

So Greg found himself outside of Sherlock’s flat, Thai food in hand. He unlocked the door and let himself in. He had, as it turned out, found out what had changed DI Tobias’ mind about letting Sherlock help. He’d finally met the elusive Mycroft Holmes, and yes. He was definitely secretly Voldemort or something. The man was fucking terrifying, and invasive as hell. He was the reason that Lestrade had a key to Sherlock’s apartment.

 

Sherlock was sitting in the middle of the floor, staring at the wall behind his sofa, at the pictures and clippings tacked there in no pattern that Lestrade could see. There were empty or partially empty cups everywhere, the scent of cigarettes was heavy in the air. There was also a distinct scent of sour milk and what might have been vomit. But Greg didn’t really notice much about the flat at the moment. He was too focused on the huge, almost iridescent wings that spread from Sherlock’s back. They were limp and sprawling out behind him, dark purples and blues and greens that looked black, spreading like ink on the floor. They were probably easily large enough to allow Sherlock flight, if they were strong enough. They didn’t look particularly healthy, and vaguely, Greg realized that he must keep them bound most of the time. It was probably not great for the wings. Fuck. Wings. He had not seen that coming.

 

Sherlock half turned, and Greg could tell that he was definitely not all there. He studied Greg for a long moment, and he could tell that Sherlock was trying to determine if he was really there or not. “It’s a rather confounding problem,” he said, a little blearily, gesturing at the wall. “I am so close.” He tapped his temple with one long finger, then turned back to face his wall again. “There’s a connection I’m missing.”

 

Lestrade forced himself out of his shocked stupor. He could freak out about this later. He put the food in the fridge. It wouldn’t do Sherlock much good right now. He wondered just how long Sherlock had been sitting like this, how much he’d taken of...whatever the hell he’d taken. 

 

“Come on then,” he said, pulling Sherlock to his feet. “You need a bit of a shower and some food and a bit of rest.”

 

“No, I’m...close.”

 

“I know,” he soothed (and how had he gotten himself into this situation? But there was no way he could arrest Sherlock right now, no way in hell), “but you’ll think more clearly after you shower and rest.” 

 

Sherlock was oddly pliant, even if his heart rate, when Lestrade checked his pulse, was too fast. Some sort of speedball, he thought. Shit, how had he let it get this bad? He hadn’t known Sherlock was _that_ far down the rabbit hole. But speedballs weren’t for anyone just starting out. _Worry about it later,_ he told himself firmly as he manhandled Sherlock into the ancient shower. It seemed to shake Sherlock out of his daze a little, and he was able to get himself into his pajama pants. He also agreed to eating three of the saltines that came with the food Greg had brought, and he was asleep before he was even under the covers. Greg covered him as best he could, and retreated to the sitting room to try and sort through what had just happened.

 

He ended up cleaning up a little bit; throwing out the soiled food, washing the cups, dusting the table. It certainly explained why Sherlock had been so...angry with Anderson. It explained a lot actually. He wondered if the deduction was a part of Sherlock’s mutation. God. Sherlock was a mutant. It was just...hard for him to wrap his mind around it. He called his wife to say he wouldn’t be home, and ended up leaving a message. It was rambling and distracted, but she’d put it down to the case. Greg put the phone down and sank into Sherlock’s armchair. What was he going to do?

 

He didn’t intend to fall asleep, but he woke with a start at the creak of a board. He jerked awake, hand going to his belt, when he met eyes with Sherlock, on the way back from the bathroom, looking distinctly worse for the wear, and noticing Lestrade for the first time. He was still bare chested, the wings still drooping a little behind him like a cloak. They were practically vibrating right now though, even though the rest of him was stock still.

 

“I thought I’d dreamed that,” Sherlock managed to say, not really managing ‘nonchalant.’ His face remained blank, but Greg thought he saw just a little bit of what was really going on behind that mask. There was a little despair there, and fear. But...maybe...just a little bit of hope? Or maybe relief? Something positive anyway, though it was hard for Greg to be sure. 

 

“Not so much sunshine,” yawned Lestrade. “Did your little nap help you figure any of this out? Because I’m still stumped.”

 

Sherlock looked a little suspicious, but he ran his hand through his hair, and nodded. And then he was off, explaining like he always did, though he kept throwing Lestrade tiny, slightly shocked glances. A few times, Lestrade thought the almost saw a little smile. He decided right then and there that he wouldn’t let this change anything. Even if the deductions were somehow part of a mutation, it didn’t stop Sherlock from being good at this. And, apparently, he’d just figured out how to catch a serial killer. It worked for Lestrade anyway. 

 

“I won’t tell,” he told Sherlock, as he made to leave a little while later to give the new information to the rest of the team. “But I did mean it before. You can’t get high and work with us.”

 

“You said I couldn’t come to crime scenes high,” pointed out Sherlock. “I didn’t.”

 

“You can’t get high and work with me at all,” said Greg firmly. “I don’t want to lose you Sherlock, but I can’t allow you to consult if you aren’t sober.” 

 

Sherlock nodded, and then, so quietly that Greg almost missed it, said, “Thank you,” before closing the door. Greg smiled, nodded to himself, then turned to go back to the Yard. He had a killer to bring to justice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um....sorry this took so long to get out? I have no real excuses. I just had such bad writers block. Absolutely no inspiration at all, and in the end...well, this really different sort of chapter happened.
> 
> It isn't really an interlude, and I don't know that it belongs in the main body of the story. But I needed to write something a little different. I may or may not go back to Sherlock's POV next chapter. 
> 
> Also, I really hope it isn't another like, three months before I get another chapter out. If people are still reading this...sorry?
> 
> I will try to get more in this next section done much faster.


	14. The Email

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mostly a case-chapter.  
> Think of this as 'part one of why Sally doesn't like Sherlock'  
> Part 2 to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter started out in one place, went to a different place completely, and will end up getting split into 3 parts. Yes. Three.  
> So this is part one, next (which is being posted at the same time) is an interlude. It is very short. Part three will be posted....um. Soon. 
> 
> But plus side....way less of a wait time for this chapter? so...yay me?

The case, such as it was, hadn’t really required him. Sherlock was a little bit disappointed about that. Why was Lestrade even _calling_ him for a case like this? A blind man could figure this one out. 

 

“...and when she found out that her husband was having an affair with the housekeeper, she snapped and killed both of them. I mean...points for originality in that he was sleeping with the housekeeper instead of his secretary, but honestly. Attempting to stage a murder-suicide is just so _boring._ Why does everyone think that they can do it? Really, Lestrade, next time you call me, please, _please_ can it be at least halfway interesting?”

 

“Holmes!” He turned to glare at Donovan, who had her arm around the victim’s sister, who was currently frozen, tearstained face rigid with fury. Oh well. At least she wasn’t in shock anymore. That had been annoying. And she’d wanted to be here anyway, knowing full well that they were discussing her brother’s death. 

 

“What?” he demanded, crossing his arms. 

 

“You have no idea, do you?” She tightened her arm around the victim’s sister. Ms….something. Sherlock hadn’t been paying attention when they’d been introduced. She hadn’t been at all relevant to the case, and therefore, not relevant to him. “Does it even _compute_ with you, the things you say? She just lost her brother!”

 

“And what, my being sensitive and tip-toeing around it will bring him back?”

 

“You can’t call it boring!”

 

“It is though,” he retorted. “It’s one of the oldest stories in the book. Man’s wife finds out he’s having an affair and kills him and his lover. It’s boring.”

 

The victim’s sister let out a choked sort of breath and Sally renewed her glare at Sherlock. She gave the woman one more little hug, and promised to return, before grabbing Sherlock by the arm and dragging him off. “Go home,” she said once they were out of earshot. She knew that he hadn’t had to let her pull him. He was stronger than she was, and if he’d really wanted to remain where they’d been, he could have. “Go home and tomorrow you can come to the Yard and do your paperwork.” 

 

He wrinkled his nose. ‘“I’ve already explained…”

 

“And you can’t come back. Not to another crime scene, not till you’ve figured out how to talk to the victim’s families.”

 

“You don’t get to make that decision, detective constable.” 

 

She straightened her shoulders. “Maybe not, but Lestrade listens to me. And DI Gregson listens to me.”

 

“You are just angry that I solved it before you did,” he said, petulantly. 

 

“No, it’s because you get off on this, you freak. You don’t care about helping people. You only care if things are ‘interesting’ enough for you. Well, guess what? Police work isn’t always interesting. People die, and maybe it’s passe, but it isn’t your job to decide that their lives and deaths are less valuable because they weren’t killed by someone with flair.” 

 

“That’s not what I said,” protested Sherlock.

 

“It’s how you act. So go.” She pointed again. Sherlock heaved a disgruntled sigh, and strode off,lifting the police tape for himself and trying very much to look like leaving was his idea. Still. He allowed himself a glance back, and DC Donovan was already heading back inside. Impressive, he thought. She was wrong about him of course, but that was hardly surprising. There was something about her, even so, that was damned impressive. Not that he could ever let her know that he thought so, of course. He’d have to watch out for her though. And, he reminded himself, that even if she’d earned at least a little respect, he did _not_ have to like her. 

 

****  
It was nearly two months before he was allowed back onto an active crime scene again. He blamed Sally Donovan of course. Infuriating woman. He couldn’t prove it was her, but what else could it have been? Lestrade had called him for cases that there was no way he needed help on, before she’d yelled at him. It had been Sherlock who’d finally caved, having run out of experiments to do for the time being, and since Molly had graduated, and Dr Bell had gone on...sabbatical or whatever it was that he was doing, trying to get time at the morgue at Barts had become all but impossible. He called Lestrade and begged to be allowed to help on something, no matter how mundane. 

 

The case wasn’t at all mundane. He was very pleased that he’d gotten Lestrade transferred to Violent Crimes. Or whatever the department was called, Sherlock didn’t really care. He got to look at murders and assaults and all sorts of interesting things. This one promised to be actually fascinating. A murder _and_ kidnapping. Young adult-napping? Why was it called kidnapping if the person who was abducted wasn’t a child? Unimportant. _For the moment_ he decided. He could look into it later. For now, best to call it an abduction in his own mind to stop from going down any random tangents. 

 

Mitch Casey had been found dead in the flat that he shared with Angela Olsan in the early hours of morning, when his landlord came up to complain that the damn dog wouldn’t shut up and to ‘just take it out for the love of god.’ He’d found a distraught dog and a very dead Casey. 

 

He’d been dead at least two days, blunt force trauma to the back of the head, according to the report that Lestrade handed Sherlock. Sherlock was pleased to see that Molly Hooper had her name on the file. Not as the primary mortician, but she’d apparently assisted. That would be useful. The dog, loyal beast, was clearly starving, but Casey’s body appeared untouched post-mortem. Well, it stank, but the dog hadn’t given into a baser nature and started eating him, which, Sherlock thought, did happen, or so he’d been lead to believe. He was pretty sure that Redbeard wouldn’t have eaten him. He swallowed. Morbid thoughts. He pushed away from them roughly. He didn’t want to think about Redbeard.

 

Back to the case at hand. _Casey: dead; Dog: distraught; Girlfriend: missing._

 

There was no sign of struggle. He had been struck, once, on the back of the head with a heavy object. No defensive wounds, indicating that he knew his attacker and hadn’t expected them to attack at all. The door had been locked, and though the kitchen window had been open a little, it was on the third floor, and the fire escape wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen. No one was getting up or down that way. He’d checked to see if there had been any maintenance happening on the days before Casey died, but no one had seen anyone with a ladder in the entire street, much less outside a specific flat. 

 

A cursory examination of the flat and the various electronic devices (Casey’s phone, the girlfriends phone, both laptops), showed that there had been no threatening messages, no reason for anyone to want Mitch Casey dead. Sherlock went through the trash bins as well, but he didn’t expect to find anything. The community bins had been emptied the day before, and though there was some trash in the wastebaskets around the flat, there was nothing incriminating. 

 

Sally watched him carefully as he wandered around the flat, picking up photos and books, opening cabinets and searching through the bins. “We’ve already told you what we found,” she muttered. Why the hell had they had to come back here? The place was clean. 

 

“Exactly,” said Sherlock. “This is why I don’t trust you.” 

 

“You can’t just break into her laptop,” protested Sally.

 

He spun the computer around so that the screen was facing her.

 

“Especially to go on facebook, what the hell, Holmes?”

 

He sighed. “Do I have to explain everything?” he asked. “This computer should have been logged as evidence,” he added. “It tells us exactly who took Angela Olsan.”

 

“What….” she breathed deep, fists clenching slightly at her sides. Did he really have to sound so...pompous? “What are you talking about?”

 

“Facebook. I love social media. I have several accounts. Very useful. Anyway. Angela’s facebook tells us two things. One, as I’ve mentioned, it tells us who took her. And it also tells us who killed Mitch Casey.”

 

“Aren’t they the same person?” she asked, barely resisting the urge to reach up to her hair and start pulling.

 

“Yes and no,” said Sherlock grinning at her. “Look at these photos.” He started clicking through one of the albums, the photos showing pictures of a happy Angela and Mitch in a variety of places with a variety of people. 

 

“Yeah. So?”

 

“Right. So, this is Mitch’s page. If I go to Angela’s…” he clicked into a secondary window to pull up Angela’s page. “This is what we see.”

 

He started clicking through a different album. This one, Sally noted, had several of the same pictures that had been on Mitch’s page. “There’s more people in them,” she noted. Sherlock nodded. “Mitch cropped everyone but him and Angela out. Angela didn’t do that. In fact, if you really look at the photos, half the time, Mitch is sort of off center. This man,” he pointed, “Henry Montrose, is more centered than her boyfriend.” 

 

“So this...Henry Montrose is the killer?”

 

“Just follow along.” He clicked into the next tab. “Henry took me a little longer to track down. He doesn’t have a facebook, just a MySpace account. Musician type,” he added. “He has some photos of himself and Angela here too. And Angela, apparently, never gave up her MySpace page, even after getting a facebook, though she only made one post in the last year.” 

 

He clicked into Angela’s MySpace. He probably had too many windows open, as the computer was clearly running at less than optimal speed, but he didn’t really need it to go quickly for this. He was almost done anyway. “She and Henry, last year, used to date,” said Sherlock. “She dumped him shortly before she started seeing Mitch.

 

“So...what, Henry was jealous and killed Mitch and kidnapped his ex?”

 

Sherlock sighed. “Stop jumping to conclusions.” 

 

Sally wanted to strangle him. Imperious bastard. Sherlock ignored the death glare she was sending his direction.

 

“Anyway. No. I looked into some of the deleted messages between Angela and Henry. Apparently, they had been talking about getting married before she dumped him. They’d both been concerned about money, because he was a musician and she was a store clerk, and neither of them made...well, much of anything. They’d even set a date for the wedding, and then she just dumped him.” 

 

“Just get to the point,” sighed Sally, She had a vague idea about where this was going, but damned if she’d give this arse another reason to yell at her. She’d have to see about getting him removed from crime scenes again, she thought. These last two months hadn’t been her doing, but they’d been remarkably stress-free.

 

“Fine. A few weeks ago, she made one post on her MySpace. The first in over a year. It was a photo of a wedding invitation. It was made private. Only one other person could view it. Care to guess?”

 

“Henry Montrose,” she suggested, dryly. 

“Full marks,” was the reply. “She sent Henry Montrose a wedding invitation, date, time, RSVP.”

 

“And Henry’s name is where the grooms should be,” commented Sally, studying the picture. “And...hold on. The date…”

 

Sherlock grinned at her. “Exactly. Two days ago. When Mitch died.”

 

Sally did run her hand through her hair this time. “Alright,” she said. “So Angela was in on this.”

 

“Probably,” agreed Sherlock. “I don’t know if the murder was in the original plan, but she certainly didn’t plan on sticking around with Mitch forever. If you look a little more into the bank accounts, I think you’ll find that she’s been stealing from him for a long time. She seems at least marginally clever though. You won’t find evidence of the theft on the most recent statements. You’ll have to go back further. Look for smaller transfers. A hundred quid or less, sometimes.” It would have taken a while, but even small amounts added up. And then of course, with the abduction...that’s where it stopped making sense. Killing Mitch was pointless. Why kill him? Dead, he couldn’t pay the ransom. 

 

Sherlock sighed. He needed to clear his head. He needed to _fly_. He always thought better when he was flying. 

 

****  
Flying is harder, in London. Not a lot harder, because people are stupid and almost never look up, but he has to be sneakier about entering and leaving his flat. Luckily, it’s a pretty shitty flat, and the people who live in the area are all perpetual drunks, stoners, or morons. There’s one or two mutants too, he’s figured them out, even if they haven’t caught on to _him_ yet. He hoped that they wouldn’t, even though they knew about each other. 

 

He shoved his thoughts away from the people of his neighborhood, and launched himself into the air. It was harder and harder to fly these days. His wings had been permanently damaged, he was pretty sure, by years of keeping them tightly bound. He’d barely had any respite, not since university. He tried to keep them unbound at home, but ever since Lestrade had just waltzed into his flat last year and _seen_....he’d gotten a little paranoid about it. Lestrade hadn’t cared, hadn’t treated him any differently, but Sherlock still didn’t feel quite safe anymore. Lestrade wasn’t like his father, wasn’t like Victor Trevor, but Sherlock kept waiting for the other shoe to drop anyway. 

 

He forced his wings to move faster, to send him higher into the sky. It wasn’t perfect out here, not by a long shot. It tended to smell bad, and there were too many high-rise buildings, but it was still just so...freeing. Flying was almost better than cases, and it was a hundred times better than cocaine. It was just...it was a lot more dangerous. Which, to be honest, might be one of the reasons that it was _better_. 

 

He let himself in through his own bedroom window (risky, but his across the alley neighbor wasn’t in his kitchen, and it was late enough that most people were either out, or sleeping, and it wasn’t like anyone but Mycroft watched his flat anyway. He actually felt...relaxed. Clear-headed and calm. He’d need to go flying more often, he decided. It really helped. He didn’t feel like he was buzzing out of his skin anymore, and though his wings still twinged a little painfully, they definitely felt better for having been used. Tonight, he decided, he’d let them breathe. He’d gotten a new lock for his door, he kept his windows shuttered, but...it hadn’t really helped. What if next time, it wasn’t Lestrade that came barging in? What if it was Sally? Or Anderson? He shivered at the thought. Anderson had been very clear about his thoughts on mutants. And he hated Sherlock. Finding out that Sherlock was _also_ a mutant...Anderson wouldn’t rest until he’d ruined Sherlock for good.

 

He double checked that no one had seen him come in, and closed the blinds again, before heading to his computer. He had a few new ideas about the social media angle, and how to find the scheming Angela and Henry. 

 

Sherlock was surprised to see an email from Doctor McCoy. Apparently, they’d been doing trials based on the information Sherlock had sent them when he’d been in university. Sherlock himself hadn’t continued much of the experiments himself. It was exhausting, trying to find new people to really investigate, who’d let them not only take their DNA, but whose families were willing to be involved. Coming up with all sorts of lies about what the experiments were had been fun at first, but it had gotten old fast. And he’d figured it out anyway. 

 

He’d found the M gene, and he’d discovered that it was passed down through the father’s, not the mother’s line. McCoy, it seemed, had been busy. And he’d corroborated Sherlock’s findings. In one-hundred percent of the cases they’d investigated, if the father carried the M-gene, whether it be dominant or recessive in him, the child was always a mutant. If the mother carried a dominant M-gene, the child would be a mutant, but if she carried a recessive gene, then the child had a fifty-fifty shot of either being a mutant or not. McCoy was terrible excited about it, said it would change the face of research on mutants. 

 

Sherlock sent him a brief reply, thanking him for the update. He’d already known he was right, but it was nice to have things verified. And ha. He’d have to get Mycroft to record their father’s face when he found out. “It’s your fault you bastard,” he muttered to no one. He forwarded McCoy’s email to Mycroft, though undoubtedly, his brother had been following the research obsessively since Sherlock had made it clear that he wasn’t going to back down. He’d deny it, obviously, if asked, but this involved _them_. There was no way Mycroft would have left it alone, not after he’d gotten involved. 

 

McCoy had tried to get him to put his name in the research as the primary scientist, but Sherlock wasn’t publishing. If McCoy wanted to do that, he could, and he could list Sherlock as an asset if he wanted, but he didn’t need to be the main name attached to the project either. He’d started it, he’d figured out some key pieces, but he hadn’t done most of the heavy lifting, really. He’d worked in the dark the entire time, with subpar equipment and terrible subjects, and the only reason he’d figured out anything was because he was a genius. No. He had figured out his answer, and McCoy was welcome to the credit. 

 

There was another email that was of more interest to him anyway. It had been a while since Dr Bell had contacted him. He clicked on the email, almost humming in anticipation. 

 

His heart all but stopped. It certainly _felt_ like it had stopped.

 

 _Dear Mr Holmes_ the email started,  
_If you are reading this, then I am dead. I have named you a beneficiary in my will, and my solicitor will…_

 

He couldn’t read more. His vision blurred, and the words twisted. His breath came fast and hard, and his chest felt too tight again. His throat ached. He stumbled away from the computer. No. No. That was...it was impossible. He felt sick. Dr Bell wasn’t dead. He _wasn’t_ dead.

 

His knees throbbed and Sherlock noticed that he was collapsed in the middle of his sitting room. When had that happened? His hands were shaking. He was moving to the window almost before he even noticed, before he’d planned anything, certainly. And then he was running. 

 

He thrust it open and launched himself into the air, heedless of who might be watching. He didn’t care. He needed to be numb, and he needed it _right now_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this takes place in 2006-7, for those of you keeping track at home. 
> 
>  
> 
> Facebook was created in 2004, for use by Harvard students, but by 2006, anyone with a valid email address could have one, and it was pretty damn popular pretty damn fast. To the point where I was a freak for not having one till September of 2008. So I figured that young adults like Angela and Mitch would definitely have one. Still, a lot of people had MySpace’s for a really long time too. Especially musicians and artists. Yay transitionary periods of social media! 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, X-Men The Last Stand came out in 2006, and that’s when Logan mentions that the mutant gene is carried by the father. So my thought are that the research has been peer-reviewed by the time this part of the story takes place, but it isn’t necessarily public knowledge yet.


	15. The Dealer: Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Outsider POV--Shezza's drug dealer drabble

Shinwell Johnson had come to the UK when he was fifteen after one too many slaps upside the head from his father had resulted in his father’s...untimely and definitely, for sure, accidental death. He’d stolen enough money to get on a less than savory ship from Singapore, whose captain was more interested in money and what Shinwell could smuggle into Britain for him than he was about documentation. He’d run drugs for a few years, until he was nineteen, and he started to look like trouble. He’d always been broad, but when he was a kid, it had mostly meant he looked gangly and a bit useless. As he’d gotten older though, he’d put on muscle and fat and he’d grown about ten inches, and altogether became a much better enforcer than smuggler. 

 

He’d started out fairly small time, running with someone else’s gang until he grew bored of it and branched off to try something new. He was nearing forty now, and mostly, he worked for himself. He sold drugs (the good stuff, for a lot of money) and occasionally, if someone needed to be taught a lesson, he was more than willing to teach it. Shinwell Johnson was not an easy man to surprise. He prided himself on that, in fact, in that he could take any and everything in stride. Still, he hadn’t expected to see Shezza tonight, not when he hadn’t seen the kid in months, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see him dropping _out of the sky_ , great bloody black wings making him look for all the world like some bizarre, avenging angel. Except for his eyes anyway, which were wide and furious and rimmed with red. Sober though. In his line of work, it was good to know who was sober and who wasn’t, and Shezza, though not in his proper frame of mind, was definitely sober. Though if he was here, he didn’t want to be.

 

“Wings, huh?” he asked. Shezza looked at him like he was crazy, which was utterly ridiculous, because no one flew like that and didn’t know they were doing it. “Didn’t know that was part of your skill set. Could’ve used that.” Last year, Shezza had helped him make and sort a few rather good batches of cocaine, as well as run a competing business out of town. Good thing too, they were cutting their shit with flour and sugar and all sorts of things. It was bad for business, if people thought that he was cheating them. Shezza had been good at making what he called his ‘perfect, seven-percent solution’ and he’d managed to get the competitors shut down without ever drawing any attention to Shinwell. Shinwell had let him have what he wanted, and Shezza had come by a few times after that, made some ‘seven-percent’ for Shinwell to sell and took some for himself. It had been a routine that had worked out well, and Shinwell had been sad to see the back of Shezza when he’d told him that he was probably not going to see him again. But...hey, it had been nice when it lasted and it was good that a kid that young was getting out of this business before it had a chance to ruin him. And Shinwell had seen him with the police a few times, telling them off, it had looked like, which it seemed like Shezza had enjoyed, and which Shinwell thought was probably a good thing. The police needed to be told off sometimes.

 

But here he was. Back again. Really though, it was a pity he hadn’t known about the wings. He’d have let Shezza handle a few deliveries, if he’d been willing. Put some merchandise in some hard to reach locations. He’d have paid him cash too, if he’d wanted it instead of the drugs. Right now though, Shezza didn’t seem interested in cash. 

 

“I need to be numb. Now, Johnson.” Johnson wasn’t his real name of course. He’d chosen it to be more Anglican. He was pretty sure Shezza knew that (and obviously, Shezza was a false name too--though Shinwell had no idea who had thought _Shezza_ was a name for anything but a dog), and it was one reason that he tended not to argue too much if Shezza came around to talk to him. 

 

“You seem in bad shape already,” he commented, hands in his pockets. “Dunno I should help you get worse.”

 

“You speak English better than that,” was the terse reply. “And you know I’m not high. I’ll give you cash,” he continued. “Just give me whatever you have that will make me _stop feeling_.” 

 

Shinwell wasn’t going to turn down money. Not even for a kid like Shezza who clearly was messed up already. “I give you a deal,” he decided. “Since you helped me so often.”

 

The response was an eyeroll. “Grammar,” he snapped. “You speak English perfectly, and I am not one of your moronic clients that you swindle when they think they’re cheating you due to your bad English.” 

 

Well. That was normal at least. “Fine, Shezza, have it your way. Give me a hundred and I’ll see to it that you’ll be numb for weeks.” He pulled out his wallet, leather, calfskin by the look of it, thought Shinwell, and pulled off four twenty pound notes. “You get the last one when I get it,” he told Shinwell. “Ten minutes.” And then he was launching himself into the air again. Shinwell couldn’t help but be impressed. It really was a lovely sight. He sighed, and ran his hand through his thinning hair, before pulling out his phone. If Shezza was going to their usual spot in ten minutes, he’d need to get a runner in on this. He’d just have to make sure that the man dropped off the appropriate amount of product before leaving. 

 

He arrived at the drop site fifteen minutes later. Shezza was there, and if Shinwell didn’t know about the wings, he’d never have guessed that they existed. Pity that the kid had to hide them. Couldn’t be comfortable, he thought. His runner had done his work, and Shezza had found it easily. Of course he had. He handed Shinwell the last note, and turned to leave, before he turned, and gave him a brief nod. He’d been given twice what he paid for, he knew that. Shinwell nodded back, putting the money in his own walley. “Hope it helps,” he muttered, but Shezza was already slinking off into the night.

 

*****  
Sherlock did wait until he got home before he emptied one of the little packets on the table. He didn’t let himself think about it before both lines had gone neatly up his nose. And then it was time to prepare. He still had a fresh set of needles. And the rest...the rest was just science. He just needed the little vials, and he’d make it all now. Make enough, like Johnson had said, to keep him numb for weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shinwell "Porky" Johnson, in canon, is a crook, and occasionally, acts as muscle and an informant for Sherlock. 
> 
> This is a hella short chapter, I am well aware, but it didn't really fit as part of a longer chapter.
> 
> So...I dunno. What did you all think of Shinwell? I sort of had fun writing him, so if someone else (even just one someone) likes him...he might come back.


	16. The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's drug habit comes to a head.  
> Basically, why Sally hates Sherlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for playing fast and loose with legal and hospital procedures, and really, really horrible parenting,  
> Basically--nothing good happens in this chapter. See bottom for spoilers

It was unsustainable. He knew that. At the rate he was going, it was a matter of weeks before he wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore. Or until he ran out of money. But right now, just at this moment, he didn’t give a damn about either of those things. 

He had _liked_ Doctor Bell. The man had given him a reason to look forward to something. He’d taught him how to make more _sense_ of all the information that constantly flooded his senses that Sherlock couldn’t ignore. And he’d...known that he was going to die. Known well enough to have had everything prepared, to send an ‘if you are reading this I am dead’ email. How had Sherlock _missed_ it? He simply couldn’t parse it out. He’d revisited every recent memory of their interactions, tried to recall every bit of written correspondence. He kept coming up blank.

He kept coming back to the fact that they’d had plans. Upcoming plans. They were supposed to meet later in the week. They’d have coffee and pastries and deduce the coffee shop patrons, and then they were going to the morgue for a lesson. They had _plans_. And now...now they didn’t. 

Sherlock’s brain kept circling back to it. The plans. He couldn’t be dead. It just...it wasn’t feasible. He hadn’t been...chronically ill. He’d taught Sherlock how to see that; how people hid their illnesses. He’d been so pleased by Sherlock’s improvement in his deduction work; there was no way he’d have been so pleased if he’d missed something so crucial so. He couldn’t be dead. He _couldn’t_ be dead. Except that...he was. He was dead, and Sherlock was left on his own. 

The cocaine helped a little. Not enough to help him remember where he’d gone wrong, not enough to point out all the things that he could have done differently (and there had to be something, right? Something important that he had missed?). But it numbed him enough that he could focus on other things, occasionally. At least, a little. It certainly numbed him enough that he was able to go to the reading of the will, not that he paid much attention to it.

Sherlock, it seemed, was to be given more than a third of Bell’s estate. Something else he’d missed; how wealthy Dr Bell had been. He’d known the man wasn’t destitute, but he hadn’t known that he man had been _quite_ so old money as he apparently was. Sherlock had been, apparently, as close to a son as Bell had, and so much of his financial assets were to go to him. The rest was going to the University and to charity, but Sherlock was to be taken care of as well. 

He smoothed his hand over the letter the lawyer had given him. Sherlock had tried and failed to get through the entire thing more than three times now. He’d gotten the gist though. Bell knew what he was. He’d known for quite some time. He also knew that the chances of Sherlock ever receiving access to his trust fund from his father while the man was alive was quite slim. So, when he turned twenty five, he’d start receiving a monthly sum of two thousand pounds. No one else would be able to touch it. He couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment, though, undoubtedly, he’d be more appreciative when he no longer had to half beg Mycroft for handouts.

Sherlock sighed, and shoved the letter into his desk drawer. Now was not the time for thinking. He pulled out the little wooden box, a beautiful doctor’s box from the 18th century that he’d found at a rubbish sale and cleaned up carefully. In it were two full vials and a syringe, as well as a small rubber tie. There was also a small, plastic bag that housed extra needles. He’d filched them from Bart’s, and he was glad of his foresight. 

It didn’t take long to have the tourniquet applied and a vein raised. He was getting bruises. That was problematic. He’d have to slow down. _But not now_ , he told himself. _Not today_. By the time he had freed his wings from their bindings and gotten the worst of the kinks worked out of them, he was well and truly high. Every cell in him felt like it was on fire, he could feel each individual feather vibrating. He half fancied he could feel his cells dying and being reborn. He lay down on his stomach and let his wings quiver and stretch behind him.

****

The funeral had been two weeks ago. Sherlock hadn’t spent a full day sober since the day he’d gotten that bloody letter. He’d had to go out twice and buy more, but Jackson hadn’t said anything. Sherlock would just have to be careful the next time he went. He knew that he was taking more than he should, especially considering that he’d never done _this_ much before. Still, so far it wasn’t really a problem. And it helped him keep focused on the matter at hand, instead of dwelling on Dr Bell’s death. 

The case was a godsend. Angela Tomlin had come to his flat, which was rare in and of itself. He had recently started a website, but mostly it was rubbish about which perfumes were most likely to cause allergic reactions and how to tell the difference between different brands. And a bit about different types of cat fur. And one about shoes, and how to tell a designer print from a bargain basement one. Still, he offered his services as a sort of private detective (though he didn’t really like that term, and he had no intention of being the sort of private detective that followed people around to find out if they were cheating on their spouses).j

But Angela Tomlin had come to his flat. “Please, Mr Holmes,” she’d said, “it’s my daughter. She’s missing. She’s been gone now for almost a full day and...and I don’t think the police can help.” 

Sherlock studied her. “And why not?” he asked. “It’s their job, isn’t it, to find missing children?”

Angela swallowed, and glanced askance. “Lucy is a registered mutant.” 

Sherlock stilled. The registration laws weren’t exactly _new_ but they were hardly a requirement. Angela hurried on, “We actually participated in your study, a few years back,” she said. “We sent you samples.”

Sherlock stared at her, slightly nonplussed. “I used a pseudonym for that study,” he said, after a moment. “How did you figure out that it was me that was running it?” Because he’d tried very hard to not make that fact public. Mostly because he’d been in school at the time and his father would have tried to put a stop to it (and his findings would have been largely discredited, as the ‘professional’ scientists didn’t take too kindly to a teenager being better than them at their jobs.)

Angela smiled a little. “I’m an investigative journalist,” she explained. “And Lucy was just a baby when...when we heard about the study, but I did my homework. I knew that the chances of Lucy being a mutant were high. Both my husband and I have close family members that were mutants--my mother and his grandmother” Sherlock tuned out momentarily. That made sense then, that the girl was a registered mutant, even at a young age. If both her parents had family members that were mutants, and if even one of them had been registered, the girls name would have been on the list, only taken off if it became clear that she hadn’t shown any signs of mutation. “….anyway, I saw the Post address and I went there. It didn’t take much digging to find out who was renting the PO box, though the fact that you were a minor at the time did pose some difficulty. I am quite good at my job though.”

Sherlock was impressed, despite himself. “And you still sent the samples?” he asked. “Even though I was quite obviously...very young?”

“You seemed to know what you were doing, and I figured...I’m sorry to be so blunt, but the only reason that a person as young as you were would be so driven to do such a study is if they themselves were a mutant or, possibly, if someone they loved very much was one, so I knew that the information would be in safe hands. But that’s why I am here. I know you’ll treat this case fairly. The police...tend to take cases like this one less seriously.” 

That was true, and Sherlock knew it. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll find your daughter, Mrs Tomlin. I will likely work with the police a little though. It might be inevitable. And I’ll need access to your home. On our way to yours, you can tell me more about her disappearance.” 

***  
Mr Tomlin had been less enthusiastic than his wife about bringing on a non-professional, but he too, was at his wits end. He just wanted his daughter back. The police, he told Sherlock, were trying to blame _him_ because Angela’s friend had mentioned that they were fighting, and even he had admitted to spending a night or two on the sofa of a friends place. “But we’re getting counseling,” he said, furiously, “not a divorce.” 

Lucy’s room was full of pictures of horses, both photographs and posters as well as pictures she’d drawn with crayons and an unsteady hand. She’d only just turned nine, her mutation apparently revealing itself slightly earlier than most, though it wasn’t exactly rare, for it to manifest at that age, especially if there were stressors present (fighting parents definitely being a significant stressor). 

She also had a music stand and a flute, which, when he opened, he noted that either she was meticulous about cleaning it, or she’d never so much as touched it. The music had notes scribbled on it in pencil though, so she probably liked her flute just as much as she liked horses. “We just signed her up for a lesson,” said Angela from the doorway. “She was so excited about it. She’s never ridden a horse before, and she’s been talking of nothing else for the past week.”

Sherlock nodded and left her room. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, absently, mind already barrelling down about twelve different tracks. 

He sat at a nearby internet cafe to start his research. It didn’t take long to find out that Lucy Tomlin was not the first child to be abducted recently. In the past four months, six children, all registered mutants, had vanished. None of the cases had been solved. Sherlock closed his eyes and thought for a long moment, then packed up again and made his way to the Yard. 

“You can’t just barge in on any case!” protested Lestrade. “And this isn’t my division anyway. I’m not _on_ the Tomlin kidnapping. I wasn’t on _any_ of these cases.”

“So? I just need the records. You can get them for me, and don’t pretend you can’t.”

“Why?” demanded Lestrade. “Why should I cash in my favors for you?”

Sherlock sniffed. “Because a child’s life hangs in the balance, and I’d have thought that you’d care about that.” Lestrade gaped at him, then stalked off, grumbling to the records department. Sherlock allowed himself a little, triumphant grin. 

Lestrade, for his part, wasn’t a fool. He knew when he was being manipulated, but fuck it, Sherlock was right. There was a child’s life at stake, and damned if he was going to be the reason that Sherlock couldn’t gather as much information as he needed. And the parents _had_ brought him onto the case. 

***  
The files weren’t all that large. That was troubling. And disappointing. Only a few slips of paper for each child. A few statements, a few photos of the areas where the children had been last seen, very tiny lists of evidence. Sherlock rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock. He hadn’t brought any of his stuff with him. Of course he hadn’t. That would have been reckless and...he forced himself back to the problem at hand. Now was not the time to think about getting high.

It took him a little longer than it probably should have to notice. Victims one, two and three (Victoria Matlock, age 11, Jason Brando, age 13, Alice Caton, 12) had all been taken within exactly thirty days of each other. The fourth child (Susan Gatlin, 11), had been taken only twenty days after Alice. And the fifth child, (Steve Marks, 13) had been taken fifteen days after that. Lucy had been taken eight days after Steve. But...if it was the same person, thought Sherlock, why be so meticulous the first few times and then give it up? Most serial killers (if the kidnapper was killing the children, and honestly, Sherlock did find it likely), didn’t give up on routine quite so quickly. 

It took a little bit more digging (and some quick sneaking around on Lestrade’s computer) but he discovered that these six children _weren’t_ the only victims. There’d been four others before--all had one listed parent as a registered mutant, though they themselves hadn’t been, and all had been returned within a week, with no memory of their ordeal. The timing worked out though. All taken within thirty days of each other. He studied the IDs a little more carefully. A child of a registered mutant was only registered by default if _both_ parents had immediate family members that were registered. These children either had only one registered parent (and in Sherlock’s opinion, it was almost certainly on the mother’s side, unless the child simply hadn’t developed signs of mutation yet), and apparently, that wasn’t what this kidnapper wanted.

His own research wasn’t exactly common knowledge yet, and it would take scientists years to fully replicate and trust his information (even if it did primarily come from Dr McCoy, who at least was well known in the scientific as well as the mutant community). It was frustrating, a little, if only because it made things like _this_ possible. He wished that he could contact the previous victims, the ones who had returned. Maybe they’d remembered _something_. But there wasn’t any contact information for them, and anyway, he’d never be able to get near them. Parents could be so protective. Even his father wouldn’t have let the police talk to him when he’d been young, though that probably had more to do with not wanting Sherlock to say anything that would embarrass him.

Sherlock took over Lestrade’s computer once more, and ignored the man’s protests entirely. It took a few hours, but he finally found another link. A forum website, that allowed parents of mutants (and probably people who were mutants themselves) to find support or validation (or both). It really was all over the place in terms of organization. A thread that highlighted being oneself and loving oneself unconditionally was right next to a thread that talked a lot about ‘conversion therapy.’ There were a lot of conversations that were just complaints: ‘We’ll have an argument, and he’ll just bloody go invisible! What am I supposed to do about that?’ or ‘she keeps messing with the television. Even if she’s up in her room, the tv’ll start just flickering on and off or switching channels without warning, or she’ll unplug it entirely and just be watching until it’s time to go to bed and when I try to watch, it takes forever to set everything back up again.’

Some threads were technically nicer, but Sherlock still sort of saw it as exploitation. ‘He can make the plants do whatever he wants, I’ll never lose another gardening competition as long as he helps me out!’  
‘I’ll never have to untangle the x-mas lights again, haha’

Not all of it was terrible. Some of the sentiments were actually quite nice, people trying to scrape out a community that actually cared, that didn’t fear or want to exploit their children, that wanted help on how to best take care of and support a child that they, perhaps, weren’t perfectly equipped to help. 

All six of the parents of the missing children had been involved, or were involved, actively, with the website. They didn’t know each other, all had been involved in different places on the website, some in a decent way, others in a...not so decent way. But they’d all been involved, and all of them had talked to, messaged, or private messaged one particular moderator several times. Sherlock grinned. He’d found the connection. 

The children had all vanished within a week of a detailed conversation with this moderator (username rosesnthorns21). They had disappeared from very different areas of London--except the first child. Victoria Matlock had vanished from Ipswitch. Her parents had not been among the kinder guardians; in fact, they’d been of the opinion that sending her to a therapy camp would cure her of her mutation. It took a lot of trawling through backlogs (and only a very small amount of hacking that Sherlock sort of suspected Mycroft of helping him through) but he did find out that the moderator had, in a private message, told the Matlock’s about a group that sometimes met not far from their house, which used a sort of ‘outpatient’ treatment on the young mutants. Mrs Matlock had called the police three days after Victoria hadn’t returned home from the meeting.

Sherlock rubbed his temples. His parents hadn’t been...understanding, or supportive or...good, in any way. His father had made him keep his wings a secret, keep them hidden, and now the habit was so ingrained he doubted he’d ever be able to break it, even if the stigma of mutation suddenly disappeared forever. But they’d never sent him anywhere to try and get rid of it. He supposed they’d been too smart to think it would work, but still. They wouldn’t have waited three days if he went missing. Even if they _were_ only concerned with their public image, and not his well being, they wouldn’t have waited for so long. 

He shook his head, and tried to refocus on the case. Ipswitch. Why had everyone been taken from London except Victoria? Tracking the IP address of the moderator turned out to be easier than he’d expected, and after two false starts, he had a name. 

Kathleen Donner was forty six, unmarried, and had no children. She’d been hospitalized twice (though he couldn’t gain access to the files. There went his theory that Mycroft was watching. Or maybe that just proved it), and she was the manager at a rather high end jewelry store. She’d won twelve sales records. That was...impressive. She had a house in London, and a summer home….Sherlock grinned. Ipswitch. Well, really it was about fifteen kilometers outside Ipswitch, close to the Channel. But that checked out, time-wise. Victoria had been the first success, the easiest to gain access to, both because of her parents and her proximity. The other children’s parents had been less horrible. 

Reading through their interactions with Donner on the forum, Sherlock had to be impressed. She was adept at getting information out of the parents without seeming like she was trying to get the information. She was phenomenal at telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, no matter where she found them. There were little tidbits of personal information that the parents just dropped into the conversation that a clever person could pretty easily use to find someone. Mentions of walks in the park, or visiting a favorite restaurant or museum narrowed down a kidnapper's hunting ground enormously. A brief mention of height (she hates that she’s the smallest one in her class), or hair color or skin (he loves being outside, but he burns so easily that I worry) made things even easier. Not that Donner always needed those descriptions. There were a number of personal questions that you had to fill out to be a part of the website at all. As a moderator, Donner would have access to real names, which, combined with general locations gleaned from her conversations with the parents, made it pretty easy to track down schools and find just who she was looking for at any given time.

Sherlock rubbed his neck. He was sore from sitting for so long in one position. His leg, he noticed, was jittering up and down. He stood, when he couldn’t make it stop. “Lestrade!” he yelled.

“He went home.” Sherlock blinked around the room, eyes finally landing on Sally Donovan. “He left like an hour ago, Holmes, said to tell you not to download any virus’ or something on his computer.”

He licked his lips, then squared his shoulders. “We need to talk to DI Jones,” said Sherlock. “He’s on the Tomlin case right? I’m about to catch him a serial kidnapper. Possibly a killer, but I don’t have enough information for that yet.”

Donovan raised her eyebrows. “Think so? Spill then. I’m not going in there until I know what you do.” Sherlock glared at her, but she just met his gaze, so he sighed and explained his rationale (talking faster than he strictly speaking _needed_ to, though it didn’t seem to throw her off any, which was annoying). Sally nodded and stood. “Alright,” she said. “Sound reasoning.”

“Of course it is,” he snapped. “It was _my_ reasoning.” She studied him for a long moment, and he concentrated on not tapping his fingers nervously. He was fine. He was _fine_. He wished he’d brought his kit.

Twenty minutes later Sally returned, looking cross. “Jones is sending a PC and a DS out to her London house,” she said, annoyed. “He isn’t even going to bother going himself! Has a standing date with his hand and Britain’s Next Top Model probably.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose slightly. There was something just...indecent about that. He wasn’t entirely sure what that show was, but he could make an educated guess. It didn’t sound nearly interesting enough to want to wank to anyway. Jones was even more dull than he’d originally thought.   
“Her London house?” said Sherlock, frowning. “I told you about her summer home, right? The London flat she shares won’t have anything in it. She has _flatmates_. The evidence...the children...they’d be in Ipswitch.”

“Apparently, there isn’t enough evidence to prove that, and we don’t have a warrant. He doesn’t think anyone’ll be there. I told him that we’ve got probable cause, and that there’s at least one judge that’d give us a warrant, but he said it could wait.”

“You told him that she’s speeding up her timeline, right? Lucy was taken only eight days after the previous victim. Who knows how much she might speed up next time.”

Sally sighed. “I’ll get a warrant,” she said, picking up the phone. “There’s a judge or two that might help me out.”

“I’m going,” he announced, when she got off the phone and said that they could have the warrant within the hour. “I told the Tomlin’s I’d find their daughter.”

Sally looked uncertain. “You don’t look so good, Holmes,” she said. “You should probably go home and sleep. And this isn’t your job.”

“I’m _going_ he snapped at her. “And you can’t stop me. I’ll just take a cab. Cab’ll be faster than a panda car anyway.”

Sally groaned, and grabbed her keys and her coat. “Fine. We’ll take my car. It’s a long way to Ipswitch.”

***  
He was shaking. It was getting harder and harder to hide it, and Sally kept glancing over at him. The drive had been largely silent, after he’d yelled at her about the radio being too loud and the music being horrible no fewer than five times. She hadn’t been very forgiving toward him after that, though, with a pointed glance at his twitching leg, she told him that if he did anything disgusting on her seats she was chucking him out even if they were on the motorway. 

It had been twenty six hours since he’d last shot up, and he was definitely starting to feel it. He was irritable and jumpy and he was actually sort of tired now. And Sally....Sall was smart. Hiding it from her was harder than hiding it from Lestrade. Lestrade didn’t _want_ to know. Sally wasn’t exactly his biggest fan. He didn’t think she actively wanted to bring him down (Anderson would love that. Sherlock still sort of hated Anderson, he had done ever since the man had implied that it didn’t matter if people murdered mutants. He’d never so much as retracted that statement, and thus, deserved every insult Sherlock could think of to throw at him), but she wasn’t going to go to bat for him either.

They had been waiting outside for almost twenty minutes now, just waiting. They’d stopped by the local courthouse to get the warrant (and Sally hadn’t let him come in, saying that some things needed to stay private) so they didn’t really _need_ to wait, in Sherlock’s opinion, but Sally insisted on not just barging in with no plan. It was only about ten o’clock anyway, she said. Donner could still be awake. According to the officers that had gone to her London flat, she hadn’t been there, had been talking about taking a long weekend to her summer home, and had left the day before. Sherlock said that this was proof, and when Sally mentioned that she had the warrant already, the others had decided to come up to them. Sally wanted to wait, to make sure they had the back-up, to make sure they had a plan. Sherlock said that it was stupid to do that since they were _here_ already. 

And so, when he saw the headlights approaching (after what seemed like forever, but really they’d only been half an hour or so behind Sally and him, so it was probably more like forty or so minutes) he got out of the car and stared up to the house, ignoring Sally’s furious instructions to come back. 

The police were too slow, he thought, furiously. Taking bloody forever on ‘procedure’ and ‘plans.’ Well. When he came back out with the girl, they’d forget that he’d promised to adhere to any sort of plan and all would be forgiven. He wasn’t the police anyway. Procedure didn’t apply to him.

He disabled the door alarm, and slipped inside the house. The basement seemed like the obvious place to hide someone you’d kidnapped. It took him a while to find the door though. He opened three doors on the silent ground floor that were storage cabinets, not the cellar door. 

He clicked on his little penlight and crept down into the cellar. He swept the beam over the room quickly, then a little more slowly. There had to be something more than this. This….this was a game room. Where were the children? Where was Lucy? 

It was on his third sweep of the room that he saw it. A little, blinking red light, and he froze. There was a soft _snick_ noise from behind him, and he turned slowly, penlight shaking. 

“Oh, look at you,” said Kathleen Donner. She wore too much lipstick. It bothered him. It had gotten on her teeth, and it looked like blood. “Poor boy. In over your head, are you?” She had one manicured hand tightly wrapped around a young girl’s skinny arm. Lucy Tomlin looked dazed, her eyes glassy, her face pale. “Did you think that I didn’t have security in place? You tripped a silent alarm you know, when you tried to turn off the front door alarm. I always have a back-up. It’s a good habit to get into, you know. And anyone trying to break in here is either a burgler...or after my research. I can’t have that.”

“I’m here for the girl,” he said, keeping his voice steady. 

“Oh, I bet you are,” she purred. She held out her hand, the one not clutching to Lucy’s arm. In it was a small syringe. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you take her. I’ve worked too hard on this serum. Like I said, I always have a back-up plan.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask about this ‘serum’ she was talking about, when there was a knock from upstairs. Donner glanced back into the room (she must have the monitors in there), and Sherlock started edging towards her. Maybe he could break her hold on Lucy. “You brought friends,” she said, sounding furious, then looked back at him, only to see him half a step away from Lucy, and her eyes hardened still further. “I said _no_ ” she hissed, and plunged the syringe into the girl’s arm, depressing the plunger in one smooth movement. She yanked it out and dropped it, crushing it with her foot. “The police.” She shook her head in disgust. “If I can’t have her, no one shall. You won’t get to use my research.” Lucy had gone even more grey, and she gave a soft, pained moan, even as she slumped to the floor as Donner let go of her arm. “I’ve discovered...the more aggressive the treatment, the more effective the serum you know. It does tend to have...lethal effects though.”

“No!” he darted forward to grab Lucy, but her breath was coming too fast, a thin sheen of sweat on her brow. 

Donner darted back into her secret room even as the police started running down the stairs, Sally’s furious voice leading the way. They’d be able to take care of Lucy, thought Sherlock, letting her down to run in after Kathleen. She had smashed one computer already, and he lunged at her. He didn’t know what her serum did, didn’t know why she’d felt the need to try and kill a nine year old for it, but he couldn’t let her destroy the information. 

Time seemed to slow down. Seconds stretched out for what seemed like minutes, maybe longer. He grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her, as she howled something at him. He couldn’t make sense of her words. Maybe she wasn’t even _speaking_ words at that point. Jones’ officers burst into the room and Sherlock relinquished Donner to them, though she kept fighting--kicking out and screaming. It took both of them to finally get her to the ground and in handcuffs. He followed them out of the room, and saw Sally on the floor, phone to her ear. His ears roared with imaginary wind, and he suddenly felt very dizzy.

He slammed to the floor. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Lucy’s pale face.

***  
The beeping woke him. He tried to turn off his alarm, but his hands wouldn’t move. “Oh good, you’re awake.” He blinked, trying to make his limbs cooperate. Sally Donovan stood at the foot of his bed. “You paying attention, freak?” His brow furrowed. And then he panicked slightly. Hospital. He was in the hospital. He relaxed only slightly when he found they hadn’t taken him out of his clothes, except for his jacket. His shirt, the bindings on his wings, they were both still intact, though his back ached. He didn’t usually sleep on his bound wings. More proof that all they’d done was take some blood. 

“Sally? The...gi-”

“Lucy died four minutes before the paramedics showed up,” said Sally. “Whatever that bitch injected her with was fast acting, though they haven’t been able to figure out just what was in it based on her bloodwork. You, on the other hand,” she was absolutely shaking, she was so angry. “You failed to fucking mention that you are such a bloody junkie that you can’t go a day without facing severe withdrawal. You passed out.” She had her arms tightly folded, and Sherlock couldn’t remember ever seeing her with such...hate in her eyes. “I saw the tapes, Sherlock. Did you know that you were on camera? She had her whole house wired up. I guess she was paranoid. And do you know what?” Sally gritted her teeth, and the then continued. “She was upstairs until you walked in. Soon as you did, she checked her computer, and then made her way downstairs using the back stairway as you fumbled around looking for the bloody basement door. We had a _warrant_. We knew she was there. If you had just _waited_ you junkie freak, we could have done it properly. We could have saved her.”

Sherlock opened his mouth, then closed it again. Sally continued. “But no. You hadn’t really been thinking clearly all day. You’d been irritable and jumpy and twice as impossible as usual. And then you just hare off, thinking you’re so much _better_ than the rest of us, and _  
you_ failed to notice the cameras, you didn’t even think about a secondary alarm--so how are you better than us, exactly? And now, because you couldn’t wait a bloody five extra minutes, a little girl is dead.”

She turned to stalk out of the room. “And how could you just leave her there?” Sally asked, hand on the doorknob. “You just left her there, alone, and dying, and for what?”

Sherlock swallowed, and forced himself to reply. “She was going to destroy her research. Her data….I. Didn’t want...that couldn’t happen.”

Sally stared at him. “For _information_ ,” she shook her head. “It’s disgusting, it is. Your...total lack of regard for human life. There’s something seriously wrong with you.” She didn’t spare him another glance as she left the room.

***  
Sherlock was expecting the visit from Mycroft. He wasn’t expecting his brother to show up with a suitcase and a plane ticket and a brochure. “This has gotten out of hand, brother,” he said, softly. “It’s time to end this.”

Sherlock picked up the brochure and plane ticket with a shaking hand. “Rehab,” he said, tonelessly. 

“Well. Someone is dead,” was Mycroft’s dry comment. “You can’t say that you wouldn’t have done things differently if you’d been in your right mind, Sherlock. I know you too well for that.”

“Fine,” he replied, because sometimes it was easier to just accept what Mycroft said instead of arguing, and he was just...so tired. The withdrawal was bad enough, but it didn’t help that he kept replaying Sally’s words. Would things have turned out differently if he’d waited? He didn’t know, and it was burning him up inside.  
“But why _Florida? ___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Death of a child  
> mentions of conversion therapy  
> child abuse
> 
> I have no excuses for how long this chapter took to get out at all. I just...haven't really found a solid muse, I guess. I know where the story is going, I know more or less what will happen in each chapter, I just haven't really been inspired to write.   
> This chapter....I will be honest, it isn't my best work. And there are probably a lot of mistakes in it, both grammatical and plotwise. I do apologize for that.
> 
> Thank you, for those who have left kudos (though at this point, I am pretty sure that it's mostly just two of you signing on as a guest every day to leave them, haha, because most of the kudos have been from guests, and you _can_ leave kudos daily if you do so as a guest....and I guess I just can't believe that more than a hundred people actually like this story of mine.)  
>  Just a tip, if that is indeed the case---comments definitely put me on the ball; roughly twice as fast as kudos do. 
> 
> Anyway. Next stop, Florida. 
> 
> PS--there are several easter eggs in this chapter. Tell me if you spotted them. I'll even give you the first one.  
> Detective Athelney Jones appeared in “The Sign of Four”. He didn’t like Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> And fun fact: It takes approx 1 hr 45 min to get from the city of London to the city of Ipswitch by car.


	17. Mrs Hudson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sort of an Interlude?
> 
> Mrs Hudson POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and spousal abuse
> 
> Also, playing fast and loose with the American legal system.

“...An’ keep that bloody bitch outta here, Coomey.” Frank was pacing, furious.  
“Sorry sir. She’s your wife. Said that she had the latest books, an’ I thought-”  
“Do I pay you to think? No. I don’t. In fact, I might start _docking_ your pay for thinkin’. Keep her out when I’ve got company.”

Martha closed her eyes, leaned her head against the wall. She’d already been hustled out of the room, a bruise already forming on her wrist, her cheek stinging slightly where he’d slapped her. None of that hurt quite as badly though, as the sight of Frank, trousers around his ankles, hand tangled in the hair of a young woman, her hair as red as her lips around his cock. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d cheated on her, wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. Still, it hurt every time. She was a silly old fool. She and Frank hadn’t been in love for a long time. She wasn’t even sure if they ever _had_ been in love if she was honest. Still. He’d made a vow to her. And she’d been nothing but helpful, hadn’t she? Kept his bloody books, made sure that he had enough legitimate enterprises that the IRS wouldn’t come sniffing around. And how did he repay her? With women twenty and thirty years too young for him and the back of his hand. 

When Coomey came back out of the office, he glanced at her, shot her an apologetic look. “Sorry Mrs Hudson,” he said. “Think you’d best make yourself scarce for the rest of the day.” Martha straightened and nodded, brushing her hand across her face. Good. She wasn’t crying. That would have just been the icing on the cake of this...humiliating day.

She didn’t acknowledge him again as she strode down the corridor, her knuckles turning white around the file she was holding. She could play this game too, she decided. She’d only gone to confront him about his latest…endeavor. Martha doubted that he’d intended for her to even find out about it, but then, she was also certain he had no idea how much she actually did for him. But when he started to branch out, she _always_ found out about it. Martha resolved to keep an eye on this one, and if she wasn’t as...diligent about keeping the books kosher, well then. Frank deserved a few years in prison. 

She found herself, as she often did, at the little bar in the sitting room. As always, she told herself that she’d only have the one brandy, to calm her nerves a little, and, as always, she ended up not really noticing until she’d finished her third. “This is the last time,” she told herself (as she always did). Martha sighed, and picked up the file again, and made her way back to her own office. Frank thought it was hilarious that she had one, but she used hers for its intended purpose far more often than he did. She locked the file in her desk and slipped the key onto a small chain, hanging it around her neck. It would be safe enough. 

****  
That bloody red-head kept hanging around. Martha hated her, a little bit. She pitied her a bit as well. Frank wasn’t always good to her mistresses, even though he always fancied himself in love with them. This one was different though, in a way that made Martha nervous. For one thing, she’d been the only girl Martha had seen for weeks. Usually he’d be bored with his newest conquest by now and he’d be back with Martha, sharing their bed. This time though...he was actually trying to _woo_ her, it seemed. 

Frank was by no means ugly. He was old, of course, but he didn’t really look it. He’d managed to keep fit, still had his full head of hair, though it was whiter now than it had been before, still had perfect teeth. He’d gotten lucky with the botox too, only getting enough to knock ten years off his face instead of looking stretched out and fake and plastic. Still, it confused Martha a bit, how he could have these...twenty year old girls eating out of the palm of his hand. 

Sometimes it was a bit more obvious. He kept them supplied with coke, or heroin, or pills, or whatever else it was that they wanted. It was a nasty business, and it bothered her, but she’d given up on hoping it would stop. It was what it was. Frank was who he was, and she’d tossed her lot in with him too long ago to really do much about it now. It wasn’t like she was without her own share of lovers anyway. She just chose more _appropriate_ ones. Men her own age (or thereabouts). They weren’t always respectable of course. Several were ‘associates’ of Frank’s. And she’d slept with a few of his competitors too, either when she was pissed off at him, or sometimes when she was helping him find out things about them to put them out of business. 

This was getting ridiculous though. The girl wasn’t going to _marry_ Frank. And he wouldn’t divorce Martha anyway. He’d never, ever get rid of her. She knew far too much about him at this point. So why was she still _here?_ Martha watched her carefully, though that was difficult as she _also_ tried to avoid her whenever possible. She didn’t even know the girl’s name. She wasn’t sure that she even wanted to know. 

***  
It was the shouting that woke her. Frank. And a woman. The red-head? Martha slipped from her bed cautiously, pulling her dressing gown around her as she crept down the hallway. Frank’s office door was closed, but she heard the sound of a slap, and a roar of rage. Martha jumped a little. Still. That was... interesting. She didn’t really dare go closer, to try and hear what they were actually saying. If someone came storming out of the office, she needed to be able to duck into the bathroom or get back to her own bedroom before anyone knew that she was awake. 

“Where is he?” That came through loud and clear. Frank was furious. The woman was cheating on him? Frank was a bit of a hypocrite that way. Didn’t like it when _his_ bit on the side _also_ had someone else. There was a loud thump, and then...then there was a lot of thumping. There was a crashing sound, and a furious, wordless shout, and then the unmistakable _BANG_ of a gunshot. Martha felt faint. She managed to hide though, tripping back down the hall to her bedroom, getting inside just as the office door opened. 

She pressed her back against the wall, trembling, as Frank’s stomped past her room. Martha waited a few minutes, then forced herself to leave the relative safety of the room and go back down to his office. The red-head lay on the floor, a bullet hole ripped through her chest, her white tank top soaked through with red, her eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Martha choked back a soft cry. 

Time seemed to jump forward. Martha didn’t actively remember getting into her car, but she’d somehow managed to get out of her neighborhood, fingers white on the steering wheel, whole body trembling as she sped down the street, a good forty miles above the posted speed limit. 

The figure came out of nowhere, emerging from the darkness like a spectre. She screamed and spun the wheel, the car skidding and fishtailing off the road. She heard the crash, rather than felt it, and then…nothing.

***  
“Are you awake for real this time?” The voice wasn’t one she recognized. Young, male. British. That was nice. She hadn’t heard a British voice in a long time. He sounded tired. Her eyes fluttered a little as she tried to take in her surroundings. 

“...where…?” she managed.

“You’re in a hospital, obviously,” the voice continued. He sounded slightly annoyed, like he’d had. And...oh, yes, she could hear the beeping of a heart monitor. “You were in a car accident. The car’s a lost cause, which apparently is a travesty. I suppose your car was nice?” Oh. It had been nice. That was sad. She’d loved her car. It had been a gift from Frank….Frank, something about...suddenly, Martha felt sick. The girl. Oh god, he’d _killed_ someone. He’d killed the girl and…

“Frank….” she managed to open her eyes, blinking, trying to focus.  
“No,” said the annoyed-sounding voice. “I’m Sherlock. I’m the one you almost ran over.”  
Martha turned her head. He was a young man, bruises under his eyes, wearing hospital scrubs, arms crossed. His knuckles were scraped and he had a bandage sticking out from the collar of his ill-fitting shirt. It seemed both too big and too small at the same time, stretched oddly over his shoulders, though it bagged in the front. There were small cuts on his face. “I’m also the one that called the hospital and stopped the bleeding in your shoulder. You’re welcome.” He paused. “We’ve been through all of this twice now,” he said. “Are you going to forget again?”

She swallowed and tried to reach up a hand to touch her shoulder, but the boy...Sherlock reached forward and pushed her hand down again. She noted the small white marks on the inside of his arm. Her heart rate spiked. Was he one of Frank’s boys? Here to make sure she...she, what, didn’t talk? Did he know that she knew? What was this Sherlock person going to do to her?

He sat back, frowning. “You were running from something,” he said. “And...you’re afraid…” he glanced down at his arm, following her line of sight. “You?” he asked, slightly incredulously. _”You_ got on the wrong side of a drug dealer?” Suddenly, he looked pleased. “Well, that is interesting. I am very glad I stuck around.” 

Martha gaped at him. “I...what?”

“You were fine,” he told her, heart rate’s been the same the whole time you were awake, then I moved your arm...you aren’t supposed to move, by the way, till the doctor checks you out to make sure you don’t pull your stitches or something, and you noticed…” he gestured. “Well. It was the only new thing offered into your line of sight and then you started panicking. Why would old needle marks bother you? And you knew what they _were_ too, which indicates that you’ve had experience with them before. So you’ve experience with drugs, and you are afraid...and I already know you were running from someone, that plus the fact that you figured out that I used to do drugs does sort of imply that you are running from some sort of drugs dealer.” He bit his lip, almost...nervous? Martha wondered about that. It was...that had been rather impressive.

“Frank,” she whispered. “Do you work for him?”

“Me?” he shook his head. “I don’t work for anyone. I was...running away from rehab,” he admitted. “I don’t need it anymore, but…” he shrugged. “Who’s Frank?”

Martha swallowed and glanced at the door. 

“I told the nurse I’d call them when you woke up,” he said. “I haven’t called for them yet. No one’s coming.” That wasn’t entirely comforting, she thought, but she licked her lips.

“Water?” 

Sherlock blinked at her, then sighed. He grabbed a small pitcher by her bed and poured the ice chips and water into a small cup. He helped her to drink it a little, only spilling a small amount on her chin and neck. He set the cup aside.

“Who is Frank?” he asked again.

“My husband,” she said, quietly. “He killed someone in our house tonight. Shot her. I just…” she closed her eyes. “He’s...he runs a lot of drugs,” she added, quietly. “I keep it...legitimate. I keep the books. I don’t know...I don’t know if he’s killed more people. But she--she was his mistress. All I heard...he asked her where ‘he’ was, and then there was a fight and then he shot her…” a few tears escaped, but she fought to get herself under control. She wasn’t sure why she was telling this young man all of this. She knew that he was an addict (possible recovering, though that might’ve been a lie), and that he’d been sneaking around late at night...and that was it. But he’d just _known_ things about her too. Someone that clever...maybe he could help. Somehow.

Sherlock was leaning forward, eyes wide and fascinated. “I’m definitely glad that I stayed,” he said. “I never thought anything interesting would happen in _Florida_.” Martha huffed out a slightly surprised, breathless laugh. Sherlock glanced at the door. “We should call your doctor. They’ll have the police talk to you too.”

She moved then, grabbing for his hand as he reached for the call button. “Don’t mess with Frank,” she said. “I shouldn’t...he’s dangerous.” 

Sherlock nodded, and pressed the call button. “I won’t tell anyone what you told me.” 

She nodded too, relaxing back into the pillows. Things got a little bit frantic after that. She never noticed exactly when Sherlock left. She hoped the young man didn’t do anything foolish. He was clever, yes, but...but why had she told him….she closed her eyes, unconsciousness overtaking her again.

***  
It had been three days. Three days. Her shoulder had been injured, they told her. A huge piece of glass had been embedded in it, but then when she’d moved in her car, it had fallen out. If Sherlock hadn’t been there, she’d have bled out. Her hip and three of her ribs had been fractured, and she had two broken bones in her hand. The doctors were confident that she’d heal up pretty well. There was some bruising, a few cuts from the glass of the windshield and windows...but they expected that she could leave the hospital after another week. 

The police told her that they’d found no evidence that anyone had been killed in Frank’s office. They’d found no evidence of any foul play or illegal activity at all. They hadn’t found any of her records, hadn’t found anyone willing to even say they’d ever seen the red-head. It was clear they thought she was a foolish old lady making up stories, possibly to garner more attention or something. 

When Frank came to visit, Sherlock was already there. He’d come back twice now, to get a bit more ‘information’ from her, he said. She hadn’t told him anything new, except that the police hadn’t found anything. He’d been rather dismissive of them. “The police are all idiots,” he’d said, loftily. “I’m not surprised.”

Now, he and Frank were sizing each other up. “Who the fuck are you?” demanded Frank.

“Your wife almost hit me with her car,” said Sherlock. “I was just making sure she was okay.”

“Get the fuck out,” the older man snarled. Sherlock scowled at him, glanced him up and down, then sauntered out. Martha wondered what he looked so damned pleased about. She couldn’t think about it too much though. Frank was there, and he looked rather terrifying.

“You’re lucky,” he told her quietly. “They police’ll never find the bodies. And they won’t find evidence of my work either. I got rid of it. You’d best be careful Martha. Don’t fuckin’ come home.” 

When he left, she cried.

***  
She woke with a start, heart pounding. Someone was in the room with her. Oh god, oh god, Frank had come back to kill her. He’d...the light flicked on, and Sherlock stood there, slightly muddy and a little bit scratched up, but looking so incredibly pleased with himself that she suddenly felt...a little more confident. 

He tossed something on her bed. She reached forward and pulled the small journal close with trembling fingers. “How…” she managed. “Did...did you find the rest?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I most certainly did. I was incredibly bored a few months ago when I first got here and I snuck out of the facility all the time. I found a lot of interesting places. Pity we’re far from the Glades, but I have a brilliant memory for interesting things you know. And when your husband came in, I noticed some very interesting reddish dirt under his fingernails, and the sort of...it is a bit clay like? Anyway, he hadn’t cleaned his shoes very well. I knew where you and I met, and I knew of a small pond area around there. It had the same sort of dirt. I remembered it because it was the _only_ place in that area that had it. It was all imported, you know. I think probably by your husband, based on some of the things I found around there. Anyway. Finding the rug wasn’t difficult. It still had the bloodstain and everything. It was brilliant. I didn’t find any bodies, but I’m pretty sure they’re just in the pond. I told the police to drag it, just in case.”

“They...believed you? I still… where did you find…”

“I’m getting to that,” he said, looking annoyed at the interruption. “I went to your house. It wasn’t hard to find. I snuck in and found the office. He’d put a new rug down, but when I rolled it up a bit, I found the bloodstain. Well. There wasn’t a bloodstain on the floor, but there was a rather incriminating smell of bleach. So I put everything back and left. I did go to the police, and told him that I was a detective with Interpol, and we were tracking Frank Hudson as part of an international drugs smuggling operation and that I was worried, because we hadn’t heard from our source in a while. Told them that she was usually quite good at checking in, but she’d missed the last one, and no one could contact her.

“I have a badge from the Met,” he told Martha. “Showed it to them. Luckily, he didn’t know the difference between a nicked badge from Scotland Yard and one from Interpol, but...anyway he agreed to come with me. Warrants,” he added, “are such a hassle. I had to get him physical evidence to get him into the bloody house. That was a trick and a half, let me tell you. I had to go back to the lake and fake some footprints that matched the size of Frank’s shoes and say I’d seen him heading away from the area. We found the rug again, and they found the stain on it, and that was enough, apparently, to get us into the house. He wasn’t there, which...that was lucky, considering I don’t think he’d have bought my story. He’d definitely have made them question it more.

“Anyway. I convinced them that the bleach smell was a bit much, and they moved the new rug and used a blacklight and found the blood that he missed. They’re double checking it now to see if it matches with the blood on the rug, but that’s not gonna be a problem. It’ll match. And even if it doesn’t…” he gestured. “I’d already found the books the first time I broke in. He’d hidden the desk in plain sight. I went to your office and saw the imprints of where your desk had been in the carpet. He’d just set the desk in his own office, but it was pretty obvious that it was the same one. I picked the lock.” He glanced down at the journal on the bed. “Clever of you, by the way. I don’t think they’ll figure it out. You’ll still have quite a nest egg, even when they take the rest of his assets. I pointed out the desk and they broke it open and found the rest of the notebooks and folders and such. He’s definitely going to jail for a long time.”

Martha stared at Sherlock for a long time. “You...what if...what if they find out?”

“That I lied?” he asked, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They got all the evidence legally. They found out who he was, and what he’s done. The source of the intel doesn’t matter. And police are all the same, no matter the country. They’re not gonna spread it around that they had outside help. Especially if they find out that I’m not actually from Interpol. They hate civilians doing their jobs for them.”

He beamed at her, and something twisted inside her a little. He really was quite young. Mid-twenties at the outside. And apparently...apparently he’d saved her life. “Thank you,” she said, softly. “Thank you, Sherlock.” She’d have to find a way to make it up to him, somehow. Someday. “I think...I think, it might be time for me to go back to England. My dad left me a building in central London. I’ve been letting it out but...it might be time to go home.”

He nodded. “Always a good choice. London is better than anywhere else in the world.” He spoke with total confidence, and total belief in what he was saying. “I’ll never live anywhere but London again. This has been _fascinating_ , so thank you, Mrs Hudson, for that. But I don’t think Florida will have much else for me after this.” 

****  
The next time she saw Sherlock, it was the day she was leaving the hospital. “I’m going home in a few days,” he told her. “Did you find anything else out? I hate leaving things unfinished.”

She smiled, and led him down the street a bit to a nearby coffee shop. “I’ll miss our little chats,” she told him. “Perhaps we’ll see each other again when I go back to London.” He looked interested, though it seemed like he was trying very hard not to let it show.

“Sure.” He paused. “Did you find anything else out though?”

She laughed a little bit. “Silly boy,” she said. And when had she gotten so damned fond of him? Martha hadn’t planned on that. “Yes. They found the girl. They also found a young man, also shot. Both were in the pond, like you thought. And...I swear, you must be psychic.”

Sherlock blinked. “Why?”

“Because the girl _was_ an informant. She was deep undercover, trying to find enough dirt on Frank to get him for the drugs running. If she’d just talked to me, I could have given her anything but…” Martha sighed. “No one ever thought to look at me, I suppose. And Frank didn’t talk business with his ladies. Not unless they were also clients, and this girl….wasn’t. He found her rooting around in his office and...I’m not really sure how, but he found out who she was. And that she had a partner. I thought that she was cheating on him, but she wasn’t. She was a cop. And he killed her and then found her partner and killed him too.” She smiled a little bit, though it felt a bit morbid. “Cop killers don’t do well in the states. They still have the death penalty here.”

Sherlock studied her for a long moment. “And...you are alright with that?”

Martha gave a small sigh. “I feel….free,” she said. “For the first time in a long time. I owe you, Sherlock.” 

He blushed and glanced down at his coffee. “It’s fine. I like crime solving. It makes things interesting.”

“Well, you certainly seem to make things interesting yourself,” she said dryly. “I’ll be moving back to London soon myself. If ever you find yourself in a need of a place to stay...I think we could work out a discounted rate at my Baker Street flat.”

Sherlock grinned at her, wide and bright. She patted his hand. “You’ve helped me, Sherlock. It’s only fair if I help you too.” And though she didn’t know him well, it certainly seemed like he’d keep things fresh. She dreaded becoming just a pathetic little old lady. She was used to a bit of adventure. Sherlock seemed to chase after thrills. That, Martha thought, might be just what the doctor ordered.

****  
He didn’t move in when she moved back to London. He didn’t even go look at the flat. Still, they met occasionally, for tea. They had champagne when she got the news that Frank Hudson had been executed by lethal injection for double homicide. 

She worried though. Sherlock didn’t seem to have any friends his own age, though he talked often of working with the Yard on cases. He took private clients too, though he was embarrassed if they ever came to his flat, which, apparently, was horrible. Still, it didn’t seem like the Yard appreciated him very much, which offended her slightly. 

It took her a long time to wear him down. She knew he had that trust fund that that doctor friend of his had set up. He could _afford_ her flat, even if she didn’t discount the rent (which of course she would). He helped her with her hip. One thing that she did miss about Frank was that it was so easy to get her soothers when he was around. She’d always dabbled, but now it actually was necessary to manage the pain in her hip. Sherlock knew where to go to get what she needed. That did make her a little nervous, but she knew what to look for, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t using himself. 

And then, one day, two years after Florida, Sherlock showed up at her Baker Street flat. “I’m moving in,” he announced. “I’ll start bringing my things over tonight.” His lips twitched a little. “Tomorrow evening, I’ll be bringing a potential flatmate as well.”

Martha’s eyes brightened. She and Sherlock had become rather good friends, she thought. He’d never looked that interested when talking about someone else. He was moving in and bringing a _flatmate_. Well, it must be someone incredibly special. They’d better be, for her Sherlock. She’d flung her arms around him in a hug, and he froze slightly before cautiously hugging her back. “I’ll get the flat ready for you,”she told him, smiling. “We’ll celebrate tonight.” 

As he left, she found herself staring after him, eyes on his back. They’d hugged before of course, but usually it was more of a side-hug. And there really was something...odd. The fit of the jacket was wrong, and there was...she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. There was something about his back that she was missing. 

When Sherlock had disappeared around the corner, she closed the door and headed up to 221 B. She’d figure it out eventually. Right now, she had cleaning to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...yeah. Mrs Hudson.   
> I've never really written her before, not for more than like, three lines.  
> I tried.
> 
> Tell me if something doesn't make sense.


	18. Interlude: Snapshots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snapshots of Sherlock's time between Florida and John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, I felt that the end of the last chapter was a bit rushed, so...here is another rushed, but slightly LESS rushed version of that same period of time.

London. There really was no place like it. Give him grey skies and rain any day over the stifling humidity of Florida. _Florida_. Honestly, what had Mycroft been thinking? The only good thing to come out of it had been meeting Mrs Hudson, and even if she’d been boring he was pretty sure he’d have liked her. She’d been...a breath of fresh air. A taste of home. And she _hadn’t_ been boring. Her case had been far more useful than rehab had been. He still got a little thrill, just thinking about it. More than anything, that probably proved there was something wrong with him, but...well, he’d always known that. They didn’t talk about mutation. It never came up, and Sherlock had no intention of being the one to start chipping at that wall. He liked Mrs Hudson. He liked it that she wanted to have tea with him, that she wanted to feed him up, that she wanted him to move into her upstairs flat. She wanted him around, which was more than he could say for anyone else he’d ever met. 

She wouldn’t though, if she knew what he was. Even if she didn’t really have a problem with mutants _generally_ no one who wasn’t a mutant themselves wanted to live with one. And she was a property owner. She’d never be able to rent out the other flat if it got out that she was renting to a mutant. And who knew what other consequences might arise. Sherlock had seen the hateful graffiti. He wouldn’t bring that down on Mrs Hudson. Still, even after the very first tea they had together when they were both finally back in the same city, he had a terrible feeling that she’d wear him down eventually. She was wily like that. Even though he _knew_ what would probably happen, he was pretty sure he didn’t have the proper defences for it.

Lestrade was easier to wrap his head around, so not two weeks after he arrived back in London, he broke into Lestrade’s office and made himself at home at the man’s desk.  
“You really are lost without me,” he said, when Lestrade himself entered the room. “Detective Inspector.” He grinned wolfishly at Lestrade, who stood in the doorway, just gaping at him. “Miss me?”

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” was all the man could say.   
Sherlock shrugged.  
“I do a lot of things I shouldn’t,” he replied. “How is it surprising to you that I am here now?”

“You’re not even meant to be in the country,” pointed out Lestrade, finally closing his office door. “Did you break out of rehab and...I dunno. Stowaway back into the country? Because that really isn’t on Sherlock.”

He rolled his eyes. “Too many spy thrillers will rot your brain,” he said, dryly. “I am finished with rehab, Mycroft paid for my ticket home and the first three months lease on a horrible flat on Montague. It’s all above board.”

“You being here, in my office isn’t above board,” muttered Lestrade. “Get out of my chair.” It was probably too much to hope that Sherlock hadn’t broken into the system and...of course. When he marched around the desk to physically remove Sherlock from the chair if necessary, the supposedly secure Yard site was open. Sherlock had at least eight files open, from what Lestrade could see. He grabbed the back of the chair, readying to actually tilt it forward, but Sherlock jumped out of it before Lestrade had the satisfaction. Pity. “And you aren’t supposed to be able to see those.”

“You shouldn’t make your password so easy to guess,” countered Sherlock.

Lestrade almost believed him. It was _Sherlock_ after all. “Wait a...you tit! It’s a series of randomly generated numbers and letters, you didn’t _guess_ that!”

Sherlock smirked at him. “No,” he agreed. “You wrote it down and stuck it in your desk. That’s pretty careless.” 

“The drawer was locked,” replied Lestrade, waspishly.

“So was your office,” pointed out Sherlock. 

Lestrade opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Touche,” he said with a sigh and settled himself into the chair Sherlock had just vacated. “So. What did you find then,” he asked, resigned.

Sherlock stared at him. “You’ll let me tell you?”

“It isn’t as if you’ll leave until I do. And I want these cases closed.” He paused. “That is not an indicator that I might let you back in the field,” he added. “Last time was a royal clusterfuck.”

Sherlock had the grace to look abashed. Well. Guilty. Lestrade was a little surprised by that, but the expression was quickly gone from the younger man’s face. “Of course,” he said, smoothly. “Well. “I’m clean now. So it shouldn’t happen again. Not like that. I won’t….allow it.” 

Lestrade watched Sherlock’s face carefully, for any sign that he might be manipulating or obfuscating or just plain lying, but Sherlock’s face was hard to read at the best of times and he seemed to really have a lock on his ‘blank’ face at the moment. So he sighed. He’d keep an eye on Sherlock, but for now, he’d accept his word as truth. 

“Alright,” he said. “Carry on then. We’ll see how you do with some cold cases, and I’ll talk it over with your brother and my supervisor. Maybe we’ll see about hiring you on as a consultant sometime.”

Sherlock grinned, and zoomed in on the first file as he explained how he had solved it.

****  
“What the hell is that freak doing here?”

“Lovely as ever to see you too Sally,” replied Sherlock evenly. “So sorry about the break up, but I am sure you’ll go back down a dress size again soon.”

Sally turned blazing eyes on Lestrade who looked like he was regretting this more than anything he’d ever regretted before in his entire life. 

“Sherlock is consulting for us on this case,” he told Sally. “But he knows that if he doesn’t behave himself and keep a goddamned civil tongue in his head he’ll be off this and any other crime scene he ever wants to be on.”

Sherlock pouted a little, but deflated. “Don’t end sentences in prepositions,” he muttered, but even he knew that was weak.

“Shut up,” replied Lestrade. “I’m doing you a favor.” He held up the crime scene tape. “Now, if you’ll stop acting like a child and follow me?”

****  
“Hello Freak.”  
“Sally.” It had become her favorite way of greeting him. She never even used his name anymore at all. Just ‘Freak.’ Always _Freak_. He tried not to let it bother him, but really. Why did it have to be _that_ word? Sometimes he wondered what she’d do if she ever found out how much of a freak he really was? Every time she spoke, he could feel his wings shiver. 

One of these days someone would notice that his coat was just a bit too large, that his shirt fit him the wrong way. The bindings he used had only improved with time, but as the wings had gotten bigger, so too had they gotten harder to hide. They were constantly full of pins and needles, sometimes sending little shocks of pain up and down his back. His neck always ached, his shoulders constantly felt like they were on fire. The wings themselves, when he was alone in his flat and he could release them, tended to lie crumpled and lifeless against his back. He never seemed to have time to fully stretch them out again before he had to hide them away. 

It always seemed to hurt worse when Sally called him ‘Freak.’ He knew that it didn’t actually work that way. That when she called him that, it simply drew his own attention to the most freakish thing about him. Sally didn’t know that though, and he had to admit...there was a certain satisfaction of not rising to her bait. At least when Lestrade was around. He always called her by her name, or her rank, and he always kept his tone civil. When Lestrade wasn’t there….well, there was always something to call her out on, something _obvious_. Either she’d broken up with someone, or gained weight, or she was on the rocks with someone...there was always something to poke at, and he could do it without raising his voice or using a snide tone. It felt nice to leave her barely able to speak from rage.

Anderson had taken to Sally’s little nickname for him. He too, tried to call Sherlock names, tried to insinuate that Sherlock didn’t know what he was doing, to seem like he was _smarter_ than Sherlock was. Sherlock didn’t have time for Anderson. He hated the man with a cold passion that hadn’t faded since the first crime scene he’d worked on with the man, when he’d shown Sherlock just what sort of person he was, with his callous disregard for mutant lives. Sometimes, if he really, really needed a pick-me-up he might find something to mock Anderson about, but mostly he just utterly denounced him. Needling Sally was fun, Anderson was beneath his notice. Though he did once start a rumor that Anderson was obsessed with dinosaurs, and everyone believed him. The Yarders didn’t like him much, but they knew that he tended to be right about those secret, hidden things. No matter how hard Anderson tried, he never could shake the reputation that he loved dinosaurs. It was a source of mockery amongst his co-workers (and suddenly, every Christmas or birthday gift he got from the men and women of the Yard was dinosaur themed), and Sherlock had been incredibly pleased with himself for months. Actually, he still felt a flush of pleasure every time he saw a dinosaur anywhere near Anderson.

****

There was something almost magical about flying over London at night. Sherlock hadn’t even been sure he’d still be able to fly at all, considering how out of shape his wings had become since Florida. But he’d had almost four days with no cases, no calls from Lestrade, no meetings with Mrs Hudson...and he was going a bit stir crazy. The worst that could happen, he reasoned, as he stood, poised on the roof, is that he could die. He rolled his shoulders, feeling his wings, loose under the bindings. He’d put it on again for the first time in days in order to sneak up to the roof. One never knew when one’s neighbors might come snooping. Granted, he was pretty sure that all of his neighbors were being paid by Mycroft to spy on him, so they probably already _knew_ , but he didn’t want to take that chance. So he’d tucked his wings away, ignoring the protesting limbs, for the short trek to the roof, but now…balanced on his toes at the edge of the roof, he almost couldn’t feel the pain.

He unbuttoned the middle three buttons on his shirt so he could reach the laces, and then he tugged, sharply. The binding loosened, and his wings, already in position, erupted through the slots in the back of his shirt. Sherlock smiled, feeling the wind in the tender and somewhat brittle feathers. This binding was better than ever. He’d really have to see about giving that tailor more business in the near future. 

_Well_ he thought, _no time like the present_ and he let himself fall. The wind caught him almost immediately, and he reflexively tilted his wings to catch it at the best angle, and then...then he was soaring. He laughed, almost cheered aloud. This...this is what had been missing from his life for so long. The last time he’d flown, he….hadn’t really been in any sort of state to enjoy it. This time was different. 

He was tempted to fly low, to dip his fingers in the Themes, interrupt some private moment in Prospect Park, to spy on the goings on of Buckingham. He didn’t really care about the royals, but surely it would be a challenge to fly by all those windows unseen? But he wasn’t a fool. A whim like that would only get him hurt, so he remained high, dipping in and out of cloud cover. Steering, as ever, was slightly a problem until he remembered how to overcompensate with his lower half. If he was going to get any sort of controlled flight, he’d really need some sort of...stabilizer. Maybe he could make some sort of...flight suit. Something that wouldn’t hamper his normal movement too much, but that he could flatten somehow to make it easier to keep his body completely flat. He’d forgotten how much _work_ flying was, how much it relied on him keeping his torso completely straight, if he wanted to not be at the complete mercy of the winds.

He flew into the heart of London (yes, that was stupid, but he was still high enough that he was pretty sure it would be fine). He settled at the top of the Eye, standing still and silent this late at night. He was just starting to really appreciate the moment, when his phone rang. No ID, but only Mycroft could manipulate his ringtone from so far away.

“What?” he all but growled into the phone.

“What are you doing, brother dear?” asked Mycroft, deceptively calm.

“Why are you asking questions to which you already have the answer?” countered Sherlock. “Wasn’t it you that told me that such a practice was simply wasting time?”

“Glad to see you retained at least some of what I have taught you. How could you be so foolish? Flying over London? You do realize that you’ve been caught on tape by no less than four CCTV cameras, don’t you?”

“And you’ve already deleted the footage,” snapped Sherlock, “and it isn’t as if they’d have been clear images anyway. I’m far too high up for that.”

“Mm. Yes. Quit apart from landing and take off...mostly, you did stay above range for a clear photo. You neglected to account for bored teenagers with insomnia. There was a very good photo of you mid take-off. Dropping from the roof, really? That was moronic,” added Mycroft. “You could have died, if your wings hadn’t been strong enough to take your weight. And I know you weren’t sure, Sherlock, you can’t fool me so don’t try.” Sherlock glared, shutting his mouth and cutting off the protest (the lie) that Mycroft had apparently foreseen. “I’ve kept it off social media, and I’ve hacked his phone. But you really must be more careful.”

Sherlock decided to never, ever thank Mycroft for whatever security measures he’d put in place to be so instantly alerted if so much of a hint of him appeared online. Especially as more and more people had phones that connected to the internet. Mycroft must be in heaven most of the time, with so much information constantly at his fingertips. If there was a God (which he doubted most of the time), He’d definitely screwed up in giving Mycroft, of all people, the ability to have any information he wanted, at anytime, so long as he had so much as a landline. It had certainly made Sherlock’s life a lot worse. 

“Whatever Mycroft. I’m hanging up now. Wipe my image from the cameras, since you care so much.” He made sure to fly past several of them on his way back, smirking as he imagined the look on his brother's face as he flipped each camera the bird.

****

“Fine,” sighed Shinwell Johnson, slumped over slightly in the slightly chintzy cafe Sherlock had arranged to be their meeting place. “But same rules as before,” he added, sticking a slightly chubby finger in Sherlock’s face. “My name stays out of it, and I am not gonna hurt my own guys. If one of them does something, you come to me, and I will deal with it, no cops. Got it?”

“Of course,” he said, offended. “What do you take me for?” He would probably ultimately go to the police on certain matters, depending on what the actual circumstances were, but there was little to no harm in letting Shinwell clean house a bit first. It was...what, Jewish tradition maybe, that let the victim decide if there was to be forgiveness or punishment? Sherlock couldn’t remember, and neither he nor Shinwell were Jewish anyway, so it hardly mattered, but it was a nice sentiment. The police served their purpose, more or less, but Sherlock thought that it was only fair that the wronged party at least have a crack at justice first.

“I take you for an addict who is looking for a new sort of fix,” replied Shinwell, dryly. “And addicts, Shezza, are notoriously self-serving.” 

Sherlock scowled at him. “I went to rehab,” he said, petulantly.

“So?” asked Shinwell. “Doesn’t mean you aren’t an addict anymore. You’re always gonna be one, even if your drug of choice changes. The sooner you accept that the better. And I don’t _care_ what your drug of choice is, so long as you don’t screw me and mine over, capiche?” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “Like I said before, I am fine with the same rules as before. You have more underworld contacts than I do. I’m...rebuilding my Network, but I was gone for a while and you know how people get. Just...get the word out there for now. I’m back. I’ll pay for good intel when I need it. Ask Tongs and Bug to spread the word too. You’ll see them before I will, I’m sure.”

Shinwell shook his head slowly. Honestly, street people and their little code names. Tongs. Bug. Even bloody Shezza. Shezza himself wasn’t even living rough, but he’d become enough of their little...society that he had his own bloody code name. Ridiculous. But Shezza was right, ultimately. He’d see Bug tomorrow probably. Shezza had trained him up a bit to help with sorting out the good merchandise from the bad, and he’d help out two or three times a week. Shinwell paid him mostly in blow, but occasionally he insisted on a hot bath and change of clothes as well. It was no more than Shezza expected anyway. 

“I’ll pass it along,” he grumbled. “But no promises. I’ll start sending people your way soon as I start hearing things.” As if he hadn’t kept his ear to the ground. “Keep an eye on Lafitte. His crew is starting to move heavier stuff than blow. Maybe pass that along to your little pet DS.”

“He’s a DI now,” said Sherlock, breezily. “And he hasn’t been on the drugs squad in ages, but I’ll pass along the message.” He tossed a twenty pound note on the table, and stood. “You used to take a lot more sugar in your coffee,” he added, and flounced out of the cafe. Shinwell watched him go, then pulled the sugar caddy close to him. Sure enough, tucked between the fake sugars was a single hundred dollar bill, US currency, just like Shinwell liked, folded to the exact dimensions of one of the little sachets of sugar. He shook his head. Good old Shezza, he thought. He’d never even seen him move toward the sugar caddy at all, and Shinwell had been here for a quarter of an hour before the other man had even shown up. That man was always surprising him.

****

“You complete nutter!” Franklin was practically howling. “Eyeballs? In the freezer! What the fuck is it going to be next? Where do you even _get_ that many eyeballs?”

“The morgue, mostly,” said Sherlock, honestly. Molly had been exceptionally helpful as of late, very keen to help him out with his increasingly odd requests. Eyeballs, thumbs, ears, in one case. A spleen. “Bio labs, occasionally. When the anatomy students are done with things, or if there are extras, Barts lets me take things home.” Well. Molly did. Occasionally, Mike Stamford helped with that too. Funny, how people turned up again. Stamford had gotten married, had a kid, and gotten fat, mostly in that order. But he was still nice to Sherlock, like he had been in school. He was...oddly understanding, and Sherlock truly didn’t understand it. Molly helped him because she thought was a clever, and she thought he was attractive. Stamford….as far as Sherlock could tell he didn’t have a reason. He’d stopped having a reason as soon as he’d matriculated from Harrow. It was almost unnerving, but Sherlock wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Stamford’s bizarre kindness would get him what he needed, thne Sherlock was willing to let it continue.

“God you’re a freak. You know what? I’m done. Fuck this. I don’t care how much your brother is paying me.” 

Sherlock blinked. He knew that Mycroft had been foisting flatmate after flatmate on him, probably as punishment for his late night flyovers. It was hard to sneak out to fly when he had to have his wings bound almost all the time, for fear of some random flatmate seeing them. He’d been having fun running them off with increasingly disgusting experiments. He’d started on rats and birds, but he’d quickly graduated to using human body parts. It was actually useful, he’d found, as the cases that Lestrade invited him to work on got increasingly more difficult (or sometimes gory), as Lestrade’s own cases became higher profile, especially as he was closing more and more of them (with Sherlock’s help).  
Still, he hadn’t quite expected Mycroft to be paying them. Franklin was the third to go, but the first to indicate that it hadn’t been his idea to move in with Sherlock in the first place. It didn’t matter that Sherlock had already known Mycroft was behind the sudden upswing in people wanting to flatshare, but actually hearing it from the lips of one of them was a bit hard to bear. 

“He’s paying you?” Stupid question. Stupid...he shouldn’t have said anything.

“Obviously. I mean, god, Holmes. Who’d want to live with you? I mean, first you don’t shut up, then you don’t talk, then you play your bloody violin for hours and hours in the middle of the night and then the _experiments_....” he shook his head. “Not to mention that you get all happy about murder. It’s not right. No one in their right mind would ever willingly live with you.” 

****

“Sherlock, dear, you really should reconsider. It’s much more central you know.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Mrs Hudson,” he began, reaching for a biscuit, but she slapped his hand away.

“They aren’t done, I told you to wait. Be a good dear and fetch the tray.” She waited until she was certain he was following her instructions before continuing. “Anyway, like I was saying, it’s much more central to the Yard and to Barts, and the Bakerloo line is right there, dear, it’s so useful It’s just off the main street so getting cabs is easy enough, but you won’t have the busses going too and fro either. Much more peaceful. The rent won’t be anymore than you are paying now, and you can use the spare bedroom for anything you like. I know you like your little experiments.”

“I couldn’t possibly-”

“Oh hush,” she interrupted him. “Of course you can. I want you to. I’m alone here, Sherlock. It would be such a help, to have a young man living in the building.”

He snorted. “That won’t work on me, Mrs Hudson,” he told her. “I mean, very good, nice try, but you forget how we actually met.”

“Never,” she sniffed. And she’d known, really, that she wouldn’t be able to play the helpless little old lady card with him. That sort of manipulation never really worked on Sherlock. Still, she had one more ace up her sleeve. “It wouldn’t half annoy your brother though. He wouldn’t be able to place his little spies in _my_ building.” It took a great deal of effort not to all but crow in triumph the moment that she saw she’d gotten him. 

****

Sherlock bent over the microscope in the Bart’s lab, inspecting the scrapings he’d taken from the window sill at Lestrade’s crime scene. It was an easy case, easier than most, really, but Lestrade liked him to be ‘sure.’ And to be ‘sure’ he needed ‘proof.’ Sherlock thought there was all the proof one needed just by the witness interviews, but Lestrade wanted foolproof. So here he was, in Bart’s lab, getting Lestrade’s ‘foolproof’ evidence. Oh well. At least he’d been able to conduct a little experiment of his own. 

Molly had no idea how right she was when she asked him if he’d had a rough day. Moving was exhausting in and of itself, but he’d also had to have a massive argument with Mycroft over it, and had to pay quite a bit to the landlord to break his lease, and then Lestrade had called, but the case wasn’t a distraction at _all_ , why hadn’t he been called in on the serial suicides? That was the case he _should_ be working on right now. But no. Stupid domestic murder. Dull. Dull, dull _dull_.

And then the door to the lab opened, ah good, Stamford was here, he wanted to freak Lestrade out by texting from a different number, and he heard a voice say “bit different from my day.” A voice that wasn’t Stamford’s at all. Sherlock stilled. How interesting. He glanced up out of the corner of his eye, then hurriedly looked back down at the microscope. 

Perhaps things weren’t turning out to be so dull after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Still kind of rushed, just a bunch of vignettes, really. I know it probably wasn't worth the wait.
> 
> So next....John. 
> 
> Also, I am sorry I am so slow about posting. I more or less know what is going to happen in this story. I have an outline. Hell, I have a (much worse) version of it fully posted on a different site (seriously it is bad. Also, it is only seven chapters), but I am just...well, I guess whatever muse I have doesn't really kick into gear for this story at the moment. So it takes me forever to post, and half the time, when I do, I just sit down for three hours and bang out a chapter and post it. You guys deserve way better than that.   
> It isn't that I am passionless about this story, or that I don't like it or...what have you, but I've been working on it for a while now (as you can tell) and I guess, like I said, I seem to have no muse.   
> If someone wants to hold me accountable and demand more from me....please do. I need to get my butt in gear, especially if I ever want to start on any other projects (and I have so many ideas. I just....can't....start them, while this story is still in the works).


	19. The Flatmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence and language and bad science. Spoilers in the note at the end

John was a wonder. He was a study in contradictions and Sherlock found it endlessly fascinating. Just his occupation alone could give Sherlock something to work with for hours at a time. An army doctor. A healer and a killer. Just that one fact spoke volumes; about John, about his character...about how he reacted to Sherlock, who was himself, he sometimes thought, a battleground. John, Sherlock had realized quickly, was an addict himself, though he tried to deny it. He wasn’t an addict like Sherlock, like his sister; he wasn’t reliant on a substance to allow him to make it through his day. John _thrived_ on adrenaline, on adventure, on every moment being more thrilling than the last. And yet...and yet he professed to want to live a ‘normal’ life. Another contradiction. John refused to admit that he wanted something _more_ , something dangerous. He thought it meant that he was flawed, or broken in some fundamental way, that he wasn’t satisfied with the mundanity of every day life.

Sherlock was determined to break John’s little fantasy about himself, that he really was just a boring ex-soldier, that all he wanted was to work in a little doctor’s office, marry some nice woman, have some nice kids...it couldn’t be more obvious that John would be tearing out his eyeballs within months of such a life, and yet John steadfastly seemed to believe that ultimately, after...whatever lark this was with Sherlock, that _that_ would be where he ended up. And that, Sherlock thought, would be such a tremendous waste. John, piddling away with a private practice, maybe, with a wife and a child and maybe a dog. Well, he reflected. The dog wouldn’t be so bad. The rest of it though….no. Not for John. Not for someone as...as miraculous as John Watson.

It wouldn’t take long, Sherlock hoped, to make John see himself in a more...appropriate light. He wasn’t even good at pretending that he wanted to fit in. He was a terrible liar, and Sherlock had no idea how the man had managed to convince himself so completely that he _cared_ what society thought of him. He believed his own story, that he wanted the things he was told by the world that he wanted. There had to have been some sort of jumping off point for that, Sherlock knew. Perhaps when his sister had come out? If John’s parents hadn’t been accepting, depending on how old John had been at the time, it could have made him see the wisdom in suppressing his true self if he thought what he really wanted wouldn’t be considered acceptable. 

It was difficult to know for sure though, considering how private John seemed to be. The man outright refused to talk about his childhood, and there was only so much Sherlock could discover through old newspapers and other public records (and police reports). Privacy though, was apparently something that John did hold dear. Unsurprising, thought Sherlock, but it could be annoying. He didn’t _need_ to hide himself here. Not like Sherlock did, at any rate. It wasn’t like Sherlock cared if the man was bisexual (he was) or that he needed the adventure of nearly dying to live (he did). In fact, Sherlock was determined to supply the latter as often as possible. After all, the love of the chase was something they had in common.

“Sherlock?” He stumbled out of his reverie, glancing up at John. 

“What?” he asked, perhaps a little shortly. 

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said over the last few minutes, have you?” John sounded an odd mix of exasperated and fond. Sherlock decided to focus on the latter. People never sounded _fond_ of him. He rolled his shoulders, shaking his head to hide the wince. There was really only one drawback to John living here. His wings had to be bound nearly all the time and it _hurt_. He’d gotten used to occasionally being able to spend a day without having to suppress them, and it was hard to get used to hiding them all the time again.

“I _said_ there’s a case.” John tapped the laptop screen with his finger. “We haven’t had a case in weeks. And no,” he added, when Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, “that broach thing didn’t count. You didn’t even leave the flat.”

“I didn’t need to leave the flat,” pointed out Sherlock. “It was ridiculous. On a scale of one to ten, it was barely a two. I don’t leave the flat for anything less than a seven.”

John raised his eyebrows. “That a new thing?” he asked. “That rating system?”

“No,” lied Sherlock. “I’ve done it that way for ages.” 

John hummed. “Do you want to here about _this_ case?”

“Why?” demanded Sherlock. “You brought me that missing broach one, and look how that turned out.”

“It was a locked room mystery. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“Locked rooms are only interesting if murder is involved and no one alive has a key. Or the ability to pick locks,” he added, thoughtfully. “And if all the suspects have alibis that are practically vacuum sealed. Missing jewelry is only interesting if there is a scavenger hunt involved.”

John’s eyebrows shot so high up his forehead it created the illusion that his hair actually receded as opposed to his eyebrows moving. It was a very interesting expression, and Sherlock decided that he needed to make it happen more often. “That sounds like a story.”

Sherlock waved a hand. “Oh, it is. Perhaps I’ll tell you about it sometime.” It had been quite an interesting case, after all. “But that’s my point, anyway. I don’t want to take missing jewelry cases unless they can beat _that_.”

“Well this is a murder,” said John. “And Lestrade is the one who emailed you--he says you aren’t answering your phone?” Sherlock shrugged. The phone was in the bedroom. He hadn’t been in there since yesterday afternoon. “Anyway. The victim is uh. That Horned King guy.” Sherlock blinked.

“The...what?”

“He took the name from some kids book I think. But he’s that hacktivist guy. Mutant with these big horns,” John mimed having horns briefly before realizing that was probably impolite or something, and dropping his hands. Sherlock rolled his eyes. 

“Dull,” he said. “He was a hacktivist and he kept threatening to spill government secrets over mutant rights. Of course he got killed.” Sherlock remembered now. The man was ridiculous, wearing a domino mask like some sort of comic book character, calling himself by a ridiculous (and obvious) nickname. He posted videos to the internet and sent them to various television stations demanding rights and making threats. He was largely considered a joke, but he did have his own sort of fanatical following. But as far as Sherlock was concerned, if you made the Brotherhood of Mutants embarrassed then you were a lost cause. Not much bothered those freaks. Honestly, their most famous member called himself Magneto. Sherlock sometimes despaired for mutant-kind, if their fate was in the hands of drama queens like The Horned King and Magneto.

“Yeah,” said John, “He’s big on mutant rights. Lots of speeches about how his people have been oppressed for too long and all that. But...according to Lestrade, he isn’t a mutant.”

Sherlock glanced over at John again, his interest renewed. “Oh no?” 

“Nope,” said John. “The Horned King has no horns. Except of course that people met him in real life all the time, and they’ve all said that the horns are definitely real. But on the body...DNA proves it’s Jeffrey Mott, aka the Horned King, but there’s no signs of him ever having had horns.” John cocked his head at Sherlock. “Body’s in the morgue and Molly’s attending right now, till around eight, if we want to take a look.” 

Sherlock was already standing. It was probably not really worth his time of course, but Lestrade knew of his weak spot for mutant cases. It was probably why he’d reached out to Sherlock in the first place. Things had gotten a bit better over the past five years, but cases involving mutants still went unsolved more often than those involving...well. Normal humans. When the higher ups started breathing down Lestrade’s neck to close a case (or to let it go cold, as happened more often), he’d send the info to Sherlock. It had to be done...unofficially, more or less, and Lestrade couldn’t give Sherlock a lot of information. But involving Sherlock, even unofficially, brought his solve rate up significantly. 

“Well, come on then!” called Sherlock over his shoulder as he bounded down the stairs. He wouldn’t leave without John. Not unless he moved too slowly. But John, of course, was right behind him, a fire in his eyes that Sherlock longed to put there permanently.  
From the Blog of Dr John H. Watson [Draft]  
The Fall of the King

The Horned King, mutant rights hacktivist is dead. Jeffrey Mott came onto the mutant rights scene three years ago under the Moniker the Horned King. His first few videos showed only a shadowy figure and a distorted voice, railing against the injustices faced by mutant kind. Soon though, as his fame and yes, his popularity, grew, the Horned King unveiled his face; and the horns that gave him his name. He held rallies, and gave impromptu speeches in public, always surrounded by an honour guard of his acolytes. 

He reached out to the Brotherhood of Mutants (a group that not much is known about, but is, according to some people, becoming more and more of a threat to public safety), but they immediately distanced themselves from him. This didn’t stop Mott. He was wanted for multiple counts of arson, theft, kidnapping, and yes, treason. His followers would have told you that he didn’t kidnap them at all, though most were underage. Sherlock said that was probably because the disenfranchised youth always are looking for an outlet, and mutant children are no exception. He also said that they were all probably looking for an excuse to cause some minor havoc and Mott gave them the opportunity to do that without fear of reprisal. 

He promised a new world order and a revolution, and people responded to that. And then, he was killed, his own horns stabbed through his neck. It was gory and personal. The police postulated that someone whose information he’d leaked had come for him, or perhaps the loved one of someone he’d convinced to join him. However, upon closer examination of the body, it was made fairly obvious that the Horned King….did not have horns. He never had.

Sherlock determined that the police were looking in entirely the wrong direction and turned his attention to Mott’s acolytes. Mott, he discovered, wasn’t a mutant after all, just a carrier of the ’M Gene’. Sherlock also discovered that though Mott wasn’t a mutant, he did have a bit of a fetish for mutants, and he desperately wanted to be one. By the time he died, he almost believed his own lie, according to various private blog posts and journals that Sherlock found (and of course, read). Sherlock discovered that Mott didn’t have just one killer, he had several. Many of his followers were furious and felt betrayed by the lies Mott had told them, and together, they overpowered him and, as on chillingly put it; “he shoved his lies down our throats. We just repaid the favor.”

The Horned King’s followers are scattered--some are in jail, awaiting trial, some are in juvenile facilities, and some are in the wind. It is unclear what sort of effect this will have on future mutant rights leaders.

 

 _John, you are not a reporter. Stick to your usual trite style. It seems to sneak in here and there anyway. If you are going to ignore all of the interesting bits, at least don’t make it read like a third rate journalist for the Sun wrote it._  
Sherlock’s phone buzzed insistently. He was at Barts, inspecting a cloven hooved young man that Molly had wanted a second opinion on before she made her report. 

‘Sherlock, stop hacking my computer and editing my blog posts. You have your own blog.’

Sherlock smirked and didn’t respond. It wasn’t his fault that John’s passwords were easy to figure out. It was practically an invitation. He certainly wasn’t going to apologize. He was saving John a world of hurt really, by making sure such ridiculousness didn’t ever see the light of day. Also, he reasoned, if John really minded, he wouldn’t leave his blog posts in draft form for more than a week. 

He shoved his phone back into his pocket and used the tweezers to gently tug at some of the leg hair on the corpse in front of him. It was easy to see, looking at this dead man, where humans had gotten the idea for satyrs and fauns and such from, in the ancient mythologies. These legs were shaggy with coarse hair all the way up to the knee and they ended in little cloven hooves like a goat. Sherlock frowned and used a gloved hand to gently press against the ankle. Interesting.

“Good catch Molly,” he said, straightening. She tilted her head slightly. “I believe we might be looking at a homicide. Tell the police to be looking for a pair of human feet. If this man is a mutant, the goat legs aren’t it.”

She looked like she might have relaxed a little. Molly was always very tense around him, and Sherlock had never quite figured out why. He tried to be nice, sort of. He gave her little smiles when she looked at him (and if he wanted something from her), he gave her compliments when she deserved them. He’d given her fashion advice too, once or twice, when she was making a truly heinous mistake. She never seemed to take too kindly to that but it didn’t make sense that she’d always be so nervous around him. He respected her most of the time, and he did at least _try_ to be nice.

“Thanks,” she said. “I thought something was off about him, but I wanted the second opinion. Mutants…” she gestured…”It’s impossible to study for every body type I mean. I mean...I am prepared for quite a lot, but I’m not a vet.” Her eyes widened. “Not that I think that mutants are...are animals or anything! But some do have very animal physiology and that’s outside my purview--” she sounded like she was gearing up for quite a rant, so Sherlock decided to save her from herself.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I think that the hooves might be from an actual goat,” he said. “They are a bit too small to be in proportion with the rest of the body. And hooves like this would require the knees of a goat. They’d be backwards as compared to a human’s knees. If a mutant was walking around on cloven hooves, they’d need the same sort of knees to keep upright. And probably there’d be a difference in the hips.” He shrugged. He wasn’t an expert on animal physiology either. “In any case,” he pointed at the dead body on the table. “Someone’s fused the bones and added fake skin to make it look like the hooves themselves are connected to the shins. Either someone killed this man and...well, chopped off his feet and glued hooves on...or they found him dead and did the same thing, either way, there’s no good explanation for it. At best we have a corpse mutilator on our hands. At worst...some sort of mad scientist trying to create a Frankenstien.” 

“Frankenstien was the doctor,” said Molly. “His creature was called Adam, if he was called anything, but mostly he was just ‘the Creature’ or Frankenstien’s monster.”

Sherlock stared at her. As if he cared. “You can mention that in the report,” he said, after a moment, before he sailed out of the room, letting the doors slam behind him.

 

******

“Is that my stethoscope?” 

Sherlock startled a little, glancing over at John. “Yes,” he said, sliding it into his pocket. “Why?”

“Sherlock,” and there was that exasperated tone. No fondness this time, John just sounded annoyed. Sherlock must have made a misstep somewhere. 

 

“John,” he said, unable to help himself mimicking John just a bit.

“What...what did I say about going through my things?” Well. That was just patronizing. Sherlock glared at John before he answered.

“You said it was an invasion of privacy and a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed without permission.” 

“Oh so you were listening.” My, but John was in _fine_ form today. “So why’ve you got that then?” 

“I didn’t go through your things,” said Sherlock, annoyed. See? He could be annoyed too John. Anyway, it was John being difficult this time, not him. “I went through your things before, which you yelled at me for, if you’ll remember. This time, I didn’t need to go through anything. I knew where everything was and you haven’t got anything _new_ and you haven’t moved anything about, so I just went to your kit and took it.” He paused. “It’s for a _case_ John.”

“You don’t have a case,” John reminded him. “You haven’t been invited on that...leg switcher case thing yet.”

“Fine,” said Sherlock. “It’s an experiment. And I need it. For the case once I’m finally invited onto it.” There’d been another mix ‘n’ mashed body yesterday. Frankly, Sherlock couldn’t see why he hadn’t been brought onto the case yet, especially considering that he was the one who’d brought it to the attention of the Yard in the first place.

John rolled his eyes. Sherlock touched the stethoscope gently. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Don’t...get anything….gory on it,” muttered John. 

“John. It’s a stethoscope. You don’t use it on _dead_ things. What exactly do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“I am sure you’d find a way to make it unusable.” 

Sherlock glared at him again. “I’m going,” he said. “And next time you have a lot of rotten kids with rotten parents making your day miserable, go actually _have_ the drinks at the pub you so desperately want. It might make you less impossible.” 

*****  
Sherlock glared at the safe, which stared back implacably. Well, it seemed like it was staring implacably anyway. And also, perhaps it seemed a touch smug. If safes had faces, Sherlock would be sorely tempted to punch this one as hard as he could. As it was...he sat back on his heels with a sigh. He was horribly distracted. And though he’d like to blame John’s stethoscope for being defective, he knew that it wasn’t the equipment that was the problem. It was him. 

The argument with John stuck in his head in a way that most of their little disagreements didn’t. He wondered if this would be the time that John finally decided that he’d had enough of Sherlock’s nonsense and just….left. He didn’t _think_ so. John relied on Sherlock for the adventure, but….but he still refused to acknowledge that. And if John’s belief that he wanted, ultimately, a normal life persisted, then maybe he _would_ leave.

It all was horribly distracting, and Sherlock was having trouble practicing his safe cracking. He was even struggling with the combinations that he _knew_ , which was just ridiculous. Perhaps it wasn’t just the fight that he was worried about, he thought, suddenly. Perhaps it was also the fact that he had lied. Just...he hadn’t been sure how John would react to the fact that his stethoscope was being used to practice an activity that would probably never be used in a strictly ‘legal’ fashion. He sighed again. Clearly, this wasn’t going to work out today. That was a pity. 

_It’s fine_ , he told himself. _It’s all fine._ He’d just go back home and...return the stethoscope and everything would be fine. And the next time, he’d avoid the conflict and he’d be able to concentrate. Well, hopefully, anyway. One never knew when you’d need to break into a safe after all. It was an important skill and one he needed to keep up with, and he could only practice effectively if he wasn’t concentrating on something else. Like John being mad at him, even if the reason John was angry was a little ridiculous.

****  
John was sitting in his chair (and wasn’t it strange, how quickly it had become _John’s_ chair, even though it had been Sherlock who’d bought it), tapping awkwardly at his laptop when Sherlock came home. He looked up long enough to glare at Sherlock, before going back to his task. Sherlock held the stethoscope out to him a little awkwardly. John let him stand there with his hand out for _several_ seconds longer than necessary before he closed the lid of his laptop and took the stethoscope back. And people said that Sherlock was the childish one.

“So,” said John. “Did you get what you needed?”

 

“Yes,” lied Sherlock. “The loan was much appreciated.”

“I didn’t loan you anything,” pointed out John. “You went through my things and you stole it.”

Sherlock’s fingers tensed slightly, and he had to concentrate to relax them. This wasn’t going well at all. 

“Just….” John sighed. “Ask permission. That’s all I want.”

Permission was ridiculous. Because what if the answer was ‘no?’ Then, if Sherlock did whatever it was he was asking to do anyway (because of course he would), then he’d just be in _more_ trouble. “Can I use your stethoscope?”

Surprisingly, John laughed. “God, you’re impossible,” he said. “I can’t just give you...an indefinite answer for that, you know.”

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow. “Okay then. I can use it if you don’t need it, how about that?”

“Fine,” said John. “If I am not using it---specifically, the stethoscope--” he pinned Sherlock with a look that made Sherlock squirm, “then you can.” Damn. Sherlock had hoped to get a bit more use out of the implied consent of the word ‘it.’ But John wasn’t an idiot. It was one of the reasons Sherlock liked him. 

“Are we going to have to go through this every time I use something of yours?” he asked, after a moment, and John sighed. Sherlock decided to take that as a ‘yes.’ 

He counted it as a win a few days later when he took the stethoscope again and John just shook his head before going back to whatever inane medical journal he was reading. This time, Sherlock managed to crack all of the safes without an issue.

*****  
John was crouched next to Sherlock behind the skip, his arm brushing lightly against Sherlock’s. Both of them were shivering slightly, but neither moved. The damp mist that had surrounded them from the moment they’d begun this little stakeout was threatening to become actual rain, which Sherlock really didn’t look forward to at all. Rain was terrible for his wings, even...or perhaps especially, when they were bound. 

At least when they were free, drying them was a more or less simple affair. When he got caught in the rain on a normal sort of day though, when they were already cramped and twisted and aching, the cold soaked straight into his bones, and he always sort of thought that it made them smell. And then, of course, drying them was a hassle at any time. Having a flatmate wasn’t helpful either, especially because John would probably suggest that they eat or something after this was over, and then he’d have to sit there, possibly with dry clothes but wet wings, for hours, until John when to bed and he could unbind them. And then, he’d still have to lock his door (and the bathroom door), and hope that they’d air dry before morning. If they didn’t, and John didn’t have clinic hours, he’d either be trapped in his room till they did dry, or he’d have to bind them up again still damp. And tonight….well, it was already approaching midnight. It didn’t seem likely that John would go to the clinic tomorrow.

“I can’t believe I left the restaurant for this,” John was muttering beside him. “Are you sure that Reynolds will even show?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” whispered Sherlock. “And it wasn’t like you were enjoying yourself anyway. You’d never last if you dated a vegetarian. I did you a favor.”

John snorted. “You keep telling yourself that mate,” he said. “You didn’t see her. How did you even know she’s vegetarian?”

“I don’t have to see her. I know the restaurant that’s all.” And he’d looked at her facebook page of course. She was a member of no less than three animal rights groups. Also PETA, which Sherlock wasn’t sure should count as an animal rights group. Sherlock could understand liking animals better than people, He disagreed with using lies and scare tactics to guilt people into doing things though. “She was trying to convert you, and trust me, no matter how the sex was, you would have dumped her in a week or so maximum. I saved you the trouble.” 

John opened his mouth to reply, but Sherlock clapped his hand over John’s lips before he could. The shadow of a man slipped past their hiding place, and they watched as he paused outside of a door nearly hidden in darkness, fighting with the lock until finally, the door opened for him. Sherlock grinned. He’d been right. He loved it when he was _right_. 

“Why aren’t we going in after him?” whispered John, shoving Sherlock’s hand away from his face. 

“Whe need to wait for him to come out,” replied Sherlock, just as quietly. “He’s retrieving some very valuable documents. They need to be on him when we catch him.”

That was the whole reason they were here, after all. Reynolds’ partner had come to Sherlock earlier that day with the case. They ran some sort of business together. Documents had disappeared before, not on any sort of regular basis, but enough that it was a little suspicious. And then, not long ago, a rival business had started pumping out product that was eerily similar to what had been on the missing documents. And Reynolds had gone on a very expensive vacation. And now, the partner had said (Sherlock had taken the advance, and promptly forgot the name of their client--John would take care of him later)--more documents had gone missing from the office. It hadn’t taken Sherlock long to find this bolt hole. Reynolds had it listed under his real name, even though neither his wife nor his partner new anything about it. It wasn’t a very interesting case. The partner was certain that Reynolds was stealing ideas from their company and selling them to rivals, he just needed proof. It was proof he could have gotten pretty much anywhere. Honestly, Sherlock shouldn’t have even taken the case, but he’d seen an opportunity to get John to leave his date and he’d taken it. So far, John always left his date, whenever Sherlock called about a case. 

He pulled out his phone and took a photo when Reynolds slipped out of the house. Reynolds froze when the flash went off. John’s breath caught in his throat as Sherlock stood and swanned over to Reynolds. “You know,” he said, “when you go to the police and make a claim that someone’s been stealing your corporate documents, it’s not a great idea to go fetch them later that day.”

Reynolds’ mouth went thin. “Back off,” he snarled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So if I searched you right now, I wouldn’t find anything you’ve just claimed as stolen?” he asked. “It’s a clever scheme,” he added. “You get paid by whomever your buyer is, and then again by insurance when you can prove that you were robbed.” He paused. “Oh, did I say clever? I meant idiotic. It’s the laziest way possible to commit fraud. Your partner is far better.”

Reynolds’ mouth opened and closed several times. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

Sherlock grinned. “He came to me earlier. But when I was investigating your offices, I found some very interesting emails on his server. Every time you’ve sold something, he’s gotten a rather impressive finders fee. It’s always been his idea before, hasn’t it? And this time, you came up with this scheme on your own. So he came to me to take you down. Which I will, obviously, but don’t worry. He’ll be sharing your cell for the next fifteen years.”

Reynolds punched him in the nose, sending Sherlock stumbling back. It wasn’t a particularly good punch, and he’d managed to jerk at least a little bit backwards to avoid the worst of it, but it still clipped him enough to make his eyes water. And then John was there, slamming Reynolds against the wall. Sherlock poked at his nose a little. Not broken, though he’d probably have an impressive black eye tomorrow. 

Reynolds was a lot scrappier than Sherlock had given him credit for though, and he managed to shove John away. He side stepped away from them, and ducked back into the flat. Sherlock launched himself after him, just barely avoiding getting hit by the door that Reynolds tried to slam behind him. John was hot on his heels as they sprinted after Reynolds. Their quarry did manage to get a door between them after he’d darted up the stairs, and Sherlock wasted valuable seconds by running into it, inertia making a fool of him.

As he burst through the door, the whole world narrowed to the tip of Reynold’s pistol, and time seemed to stop as the man’s finger pulled back on the trigger. Sherlock stumbled slightly, reaching behind him to push John to the side with him as he leapt out of the way. John stumbled but caught himself; a soldier’s instinct, and Sherlock fell to his knees. There was something….wrong. He knew it, but the exact problem hadn’t caught up to him yet. 

Everything still seemed in slow motion as John launched himself at Reynolds, as plaster rained down on both other men when the gun went off again, this time aimed at the ceiling. John twisted the pistol, and Reynolds grunted as his index finger broke. Sherlock heard the crack of bone more clearly than he’d heard that first gunshot. 

Sherlock moved to stand and nearly passed out. His back felt like it was on fire. Not just his back, he realized with a dawning horror. His wing. That first bullet might not have hit John, and it had certainly missed his head....but it had still _hit_ him. And this wasn’t going to be an easy fix. John was in front of him, saying....saying something. Sherlock gritted his teeth. He had to focus now.

“Sherlock? Sherlock are you alright? Jesus, mate. You’re scaring me. You’re...are you in shock? I didn’t think you were capable of going into shock.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, tightly. “I am not in shock. He’s not even dead.” He paused. “Right?”

John looked very concerned, his hand slipping around to Sherlock’s back. Sherlock jerked away, but the damage was done. John’s hand came away bloody. “Oh fuck. Fuck. He shot you.” Sherlock shook his head. “We have to get you to the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” snapped Sherlock, forcing himself to a standing position. “It barely grazed me. I don’t need a hospital.” And he needed to keep John’s hands away from his back. Even with the binder and his clothes, it wouldn’t take long for John to realize that there was something not quite right about him if he was allowed to touch him for too long. Sherlock had gotten a little lucky this time ,that John was distracted by the blood. “It’s already stopping, I can tell.”

“You have to let me take a look at it,” insisted John. “I’m an army doctor Sherlock, I know how to deal with bullet wounds.”

“You _were_ an army doctor,” said Sherlock, stepping away, and was glad that he didn’t sway. “You aren’t anymore. You’re hands are all shaky, you’ll butcher me.”

John glared at him. “You’re being ridiculous. My hands are fine. We have to go to hospital, now.” 

“Call Lestrade,” said Sherlock, pointing at Reynolds, still out cold on the floor. “Tie him up and call Lestrade.” 

“Sherlock!” John reached for him again, and Sherlock stepped back, stumbling a bit this time as his vision whited out briefly. 

“Get away,” he said, shakily. “Call Lestrade, I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch. If….if it is still a problem when we get home I’ll let you look.” There was no way he’d ever let John take a look. But he could get help. There had to be someone that could help. McCoy maybe. The man worked for some sort of…well, it seemed like an army a lot of the time, from some of the newer news reports. Surely they had some way to deal with bullets without drawing attention to themselves.

John seemed to not believe him, at least, not fully, but he did as he was bid anyway. He used Reynolds’ own belt and shoelaces to tie him up. Sherlock was rather impressed by how efficient it was. He’d have to find out at some point where John learned to do that. “I would have just used handcuffs,” he said, pulling a pair slowly out of his coat pocket. He needed to sit down. He needed to...he didn’t know. God. Every movement hurt. 

“Well, you could have told me about those before I took care of it,” griped John. Sherlock blinked at him. He supposed he could have given John the handcuffs earlier. He decided not to mention the fact that time seemed to be playing tricks on him. Maybe he _was_ going into shock.

“Call Lestrade.”

“You do realize that Lestrade’s in homicide. Not fraud. Or assault with a deadly weapon.” Sherlock glared at John, who didn’t seem properly intimidated. Perhaps Sherlock looked worse than he thought. Still, it was enough to make John pull out his phone and call Lestrade. Sherlock started to make his way out of the house. He called Mycroft almost before he realized what it was he was doing.

By the time John joined him on the sidewalk, the police were still several minutes away, but a large black car was pulling up next to them.

“Your back--” John started to say, but Sherlock cut him off.

“Is fine, John. Stop worrying. I’m just a bit tired I think. I need…” he didn’t know what he needed. He’d hoped that the pain would fade, but it hadn’t. It hurt to breathe. John kept talking, but Sherlock had no idea what he was saying. He stopped trying to listen.

And then they were outside Baker Street, and John was yelling at the driver. Something about hospital, probably. Sherlock managed to push open the door and stumble out of the car. Hands gripped his forearms and he blinked up into the round, concerned face of Mike Stamford. “What?” If Stamford answered, Sherlock didn’t hear. There was a rushing sound in his ears, and his vision went black.

*****  
“Back with us?” Stamford’s voice was somewhere above him and Sherlock shivered. Something was wrong. What...what was…. His wings twitched and Sherlock sat up, gasping. His wings were unbound and…. _fuck_ it hurt, why did it hurt, why were they free--and he was being pushed down onto the bed again. “Relax, Holmes,” said the other man. “Just you and me in here. John doesn’t know. Mycroft told me you wanted to keep this private.”

“How…” he wheezed. “I don’t---how do you--” Embarrassing, the way he couldn’t finish a thought.

“I’ve known since secondary, Sherlock. I saw them ages ago. I never told. I don’t know how your brother knew I knew, really.”

Sherlock’s heart was in his throat. Stamford knew. He’d always been kind to Sherlock in school though. That...that was hard to reconcile. If he knew….why would he have been kind? 

“You were shot,” said Stamford, after a minute. “If it hadn’t been for your wings, the bullet probably would have paralyzed you, near as I can tell. As it is...it lodged in your wing. Things are a bit messy now. But the damage won’t last.”

“How...how do you know?” He’d parse out...the complicated emotions later, he decided. He’d figure out how he felt about this new development and...his shaken worldview once he was well again.

“Your brother,” Stamford shrugged. “I’m not a vet. But it turns out that bone is bone. And I know how to treat a bullet wound, even if I don’t have as much experience as John. But I am still a doctor, even if I do more teaching than surgery these days.”

“You said...Mycroft…?”

“Yes,” said Stamford. “Anyway. Like I said, the fact that you were hit in the wing instead of an arm or something made things tricky, but I managed to treat it like most other bullet injuries. Had to cut away some of the feathers, sorry about that. Your brother gave me a...compound. A treatment, he said, but one that would only work if I fixed you up as much as possible first.” He set a small bottle down on the bedside table where Sherlock could see it, even from his prostrate position. “He said...well, I said wasn’t just going to jab you with some unknown substance. He said that it was created, in part, from the blood of a mutant with a healing factor that has, in the past, allowed him to walk away from the blast of an atomic bomb. If I use it, it will take a day, maybe two, but you’ll be back to normal.”

“You haven’t used it?” 

“No. I wanted it to be your choice. It won’t be pleasant. And I don’t even know if it will work.”

“The alternative is...I suppose...waiting to heal the normal way?”

“Yes,” admitted Stamford. “That’s….honestly what I’d recommend.” 

“No,” said Sherlock, immediately. “John...John cannot know. I don’t…” He shook his head, the motion sending pain shooting through his wings and up and down his back. He grunted, unable to stop the noise of pain. “If this becomes public knowledge,” he tried again, “everything will be ruined.” 

“I don’t know that you are thinking logically about this,” said Stamford. “Parliament and...other governments are putting more and more programs in place to help mutants and to ensure they are treated fairly. People aren’t as bigoted about it anymore. Those articles by...whatsis name. Doyle or...something. And McCoy...they’re changing things.”

“Things aren’t changed though,” said Sherlock. “I want the--” he gestured. “Medicine. Just tell John....that I just need bedrest or something and that I’ll call him if I need him.”

Stamford sighed. “Are you certain? We don’t even know if it will work.”

“Where did Mycroft said he got it?”

“A man called Fury,” replied Mike, after a moment. “Some...agency I never heard of is apparently developing this as some sort of vaccine. It’s still being tested.”

“Well. Test away,” said Sherlock. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You’ll die,” replied Stamford. “Next worst is that I did something wrong because your anatomy is different than what I am used to, and you’ll heal wrong and just be in pain forever.”

“Mycroft wouldn’t have given it to you if he didn’t think it would work.” Probably. “Just do it.” 

Stamford swallowed, then nodded. “Right then,” he said, and reached for the bottle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some body horror for an (as yet) unnamed corpse. Sherlock gets shot. It isn't graphic but...hey. Cover my bases.
> 
>  
> 
> So here's a chapter, I guess. Sorry it took so long. I hope it was worth it. I sort of doubt it was? I make no promises about when I'll get another chapter posted. I know that things are approaching the end pretty soon. So that's good. 
> 
> And...yay, I guess, for things (people) coming back? 
> 
> I will probably edit this chapter, at least, before a new one goes up. This time though, I just want to get something posted for the first time in months, so....polishing it can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's chapter one. 
> 
> I have two other chapters entirely written, and the outlines for seven more. Basically, the only thing I don't know for sure is if Sherlock and John will end up together in the end, or if it'll be implied that things are left open to that possibility. Don't expect smut from me, I'm not good at writing it.


End file.
